


Team Players

by CoralAcacia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Post-The Raven King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-01 13:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoralAcacia/pseuds/CoralAcacia
Summary: Off the top of his head, Declan can think of ten things he'd rather be doing with his summer than working to help win votes for the Republican party's vice presidential nominee. It has to be done, though, because to not do so would imperil the safety of his brothers. And he would rather die before he lets that happen again.(Or, the one where Declan works for Mrs. Gansey's campaign while trying to take down a wicked politician, and Helen just wants to help.)





	1. Singles

Declan Lynch has been alone for as long as he can remember. Even when surrounded by people, he is alone. He finds this to be true, still, now, as he stands at the edge of a party thrown by one Republican or another and smiles his thousand-watt smile at a congressman and his wife.

Their conversation is inane, but the conversation has never been what matters. Rather, what has always mattered is _how_ he converses: his easy glide from topic to topic, his straight white teeth, his unobtrusive laugh. People forget conversations, but they don’t forget feelings. Make them feel impressed, make them feel comfortable, make them feel intelligent, and they’ll never forget you.

He’s about halfway through his usual spiel — why waste time on constructing new conversations when you can simply recycle old, trusted ones? — when someone bumps his left shoulder purposefully. He turns, brilliant smile still painted on, and finds himself face to face with Helen Gansey.

Declan feels his smile strain. She says, “It’s been awhile, old sport,” and sips calmly from her champagne glass.

He tries not to think about the last time they saw each other: eight months ago, three hundred miles away, in a sleepy town neither of them understood. One where they both almost lost a brother, and then maybe lost something else, too, along the way.

When it becomes clear she has no intentions of leaving, he clears his throat and excuses himself from his previous conversation. Helen takes him by the arm and drags him over to a window — though he would prefer to think he simply _allows himself to be led_ — and then they look down at the blooming rose garden through the glass, shrouded by cover of night.

He says, “Did you need something?” His champagne is uncomfortably warm in his hand.

Helen looks at him, long and hard. He, meanwhile, looks back at her: she appears unreasonably elegant tonight, her hair swept up and her black dress at once classic and alluring. After a moment, she says, “You’re working as an intern with my mother’s campaign this summer.”

Declan shrugs. Looks out the window. “I have a few months free before I start at that PR company in the fall. Thought I should make myself useful.” The lie is smooth, easy, just like every other lie he’s ever told.

Helen is still squinting at him, though. “You’re a registered Democrat.”

He snorts. He won’t even bother asking how she knows that; information is a weapon, and he would be a fool to assume Helen doesn’t utilize it in exactly the same ways he does. Declan says, “My brother is gay, Helen. My entire family is Catholic. Of course I’m a registered Democrat.”

She doesn’t ask which brother, or how Catholic. She doesn’t have to. After last October and all its chaotic, brutal terror, they both know far more about each other’s lives than they ever wanted to. It’s the kind of knowing that is hard to forget, harder to avoid, the kind that keeps people awake at night.

The kind that keeps _them_ awake at night.

“Now that we’ve established your political affiliations,” she says calmly, “care to explain why you’re working on the campaign of the opposite party’s vice presidential nominee?”

He nearly forgets himself, then. Nearly reaches up and drags a hand down his face, through his hair. Nearly breaks the window, her hand. Instead, he clenches his fingers tighter around his glass of champagne and tucks his other hand into the pocket of his slacks. He says, tightly, “I consider myself an open-minded person.”

Helen steps closer, so close they’re nearly breathing the same air. In her heels, they’re nearly the same height, a fact he finds particularly unnerving as her hazel eyes drill holes in his forehead. In low tones, she hisses, “Cut the bullshit, Declan. What are you really up to?”

Her smile never leaves her face, and her hand lingers on his elbow. To anyone else, they might look like friends sharing a secret, lovers whispering sweet nothings.

He feels like a time bomb: too big for his skin, ready to explode.

Declan says, “I have to protect my family.” It’s an admission, and it’s a prayer, and it’s a Hail Mary. Helen’s eyes meet his. She takes half a step back.

“Not your family,” she says, slowly. “Ronan.”

He closes his eyes.

Declan Lynch has been alone for as long as he can remember, no matter the size of the crowd around him, because it is once you stop being alone, start trusting, start opening up, that you become vulnerable. It is then that, by default, everyone you love becomes vulnerable, too.

He hates being alone. The truth is that nothing scares him more.

But there is no other way to keep his family safe, and this is the truth that will always take precedence over the last.

Helen says, “Has someone done something?”

He wants to snort again, but he has a rule of only allowing himself one per night, and tonight’s quota has already been exhausted. In its place, he lets out a weak, hollow laugh. “You’re thinking too much like the FBI,” he says. His mind is still working in government terms, thinking about government people. Sometimes, it feels as though he never _stops_ thinking about those things. “Action, reaction. That’s no way to save people.”

“Then what is?”

“Eliminating threats. If you want to be the hero, you react. But if you want to avoid casualties, you act before it comes to that. You think like the CIA.”

She smiles a little, at the corner of her rose pink mouth. Nothing about this is funny, and both of them know it. “Is it hard, then, being the only person on your team?”

He smiles back, but it’s not his politician’s smile. This one is sharp enough to cut. This one is for pushing people away, rather than drawing them in. “I know Ganseys are team players,” he says, “but we Lynches are firm believers in every man for himself.” There’s a pause, and then he says, “It’s just a low-ranking aide looking to do some damage. I’ll take care of it.”

What he doesn’t say is, _Every night, I wonder what will happen if I ever meet something I can’t take care of. I wonder if it will be like October._

He thinks of the black blood, mirrored on Ronan and Matthew’s faces. _Unmade._ The nightmares still haunt him.

If only he had been faster.

Helen’s smile, meanwhile, grows, oblivious to his inner monologue. He wonders if she’s laughing at him. At the stiff, resigned set of his shoulders. At the way he goes about things. The thought makes him prickle at the edges. _Too much, too much, too much._ She pulls something from a pocket in her dress that he hadn’t noticed before and places it in his hand. A business card.

He sneers at it. She says, “For when you realize you’re in too deep.”

Then she turns on her heel and disappears into the crowd. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. The alone-ness, the fucking _loneliness_ , is pushing up against him, reminding him that he is twenty and an orphan, that he is twenty and irreversibly responsible for his brothers.

He never wanted to have to take care of his family.

Not like this.

Across the room, a man moves through the crowd: Peter Simmons. Declan watches him weave in and out of the masses, perfectly at ease. They make eye contact briefly, at one point, and neither of them look away until they are forced to. Peter Simmons smiles wickedly.

Good. Better that they go into this on even playing ground. Or, rather, as even as it can get; Peter Simmons will always, inevitably, be one step behind. Because while he may want power or wealth or magic  _badly_ , Declan Lynch wants his brothers safe _more_.

No one fucks with the Lynches. And it’s high time everybody got around to learning that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from that line in TRK when Gansey, Blue, and Henry are visiting the Ganseys and it says (of the Ganseys), "They were excellent team players." Also, somewhere along the way, I decided that tennis is a rich people sport (probably because of Ronan) so all of the chapter titles will be tennis references, and no one can stop me.
> 
> Anywho, hope you all liked this first chapter! Next one should be up soon :)


	2. Groundstroke

The Washington, D.C. headquarters of Senator Gansey’s campaign are found on the twelfth floor of an inconspicuous office building, five blocks from Declan’s apartment. In the elevator, he stares at the marble floor and thinks about the gun that’s lying, eager and ready, beneath the passenger seat of his Volvo. He tucks his hands in his pockets to keep himself from clenching them into fists.

A woman behind him says, “Excuse me.” He smiles at her — all teeth — as she gets off on her floor.

The moment he steps off the elevator onto the twelfth story, he’s nearly trampled by a page boy carrying three trays of coffee. The boy shouts, “Watch where you’re going, asshole,” and he sounds so like Ronan that Declan whips his head around, just to check.

It’s not him, of course. He doesn’t know if the complicated feeling in his chest is relief or disappointment.

Helen wanders into his peripheral vision, then. He tries to duck out of the way before she can notice him, but her sharp eyes are faster than his suit-clad limbs. She does a complicated thing with her mouth that she may have intended to be a smile, and she approaches.

“You’re late,” she says, shoving a clipboard at him. “Oversleep?”

He scowls, and wonders how she knew. The clipboard in his hands is cold, a pen dangling from it by a ragged string. Attached is a packet of papers, filled to the brim with phone numbers. Declan’s scowl deepens at the sight of them.

Helen points to a table over by the massive window, already occupied by ten phones and three people. “I’m sure you remember how to make a phone call?” she says, and then she’s gone.

He chooses a corner seat, his back to the window. As he dials numbers and reads off the script that’s been provided to him, occasionally jotting down a name or two, he watches the rest of the office move. More specifically, he watches Peter Simmons move: from his computer to his phone and back again.

This isn’t the first time Declan has run up against someone trying to uproot his family. Niall Lynch was a cocky bastard who thought he was invincible, and so he didn’t bother to consider the repercussions of making as many enemies as he did. He didn’t bother to consider who would be left to clean up his messes, when he was gone.

He never did.

Simmons is, as far as Declan can tell, nothing more than a man with a grudge, looking to get even with a dead man. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so real and so threatening. As it is, he sketches a map of D.C. into the corner of his script as he makes his calls, wondering which alleyway would be best for disposing of a dead body.

Across the table from him, someone blows their nose loudly and in a most obnoxious manner. From somewhere to his left, Helen says, “Planning a lunch date with Ainsley?”

It takes every modicum of self-restraint he has within him to not throw himself out the large and tempting window that’s behind him. “Ashley,” he corrects. “And we broke up. A few months ago.” At the time, he remembers thinking that it should hurt, letting go of someone who’d been a part of his life for so long. But it didn’t.

He still doesn’t quite know what it is he wants, but it wasn’t Ashley. Isn’t. What he wants isn’t someone who will agree with everything he says, who will refuse to attend church with him even once, who will make no effort to get along with his brothers.

The last one he knows is partly Ronan’s fault, too. But the way Declan sees it, every day his world is shrinking, business contacts be damned. He can count the number of people who love him on two fingers, and that’s on a good day.

What business does he have taking that love for granted?

Much to his surprise, when he looks up again, Helen is still hovering. Blandly, he says, “How’s George?”

She smiles with her teeth. “He proposed,” she says, but it sounds more like _he tried to murder me._ Declan wouldn’t be surprised if, to her, they meant the same thing.

Her ring finger is tellingly bare. He raises an eyebrow.

Helen shrugs. “How someone proposes is a very telling thing,” she sniffs, “and he did it on a yacht.”

Declan has to bite his lip to contain his laugh. “I’ll be sure to pass that on to next week’s boyfriend.”

“Please.”

And still, she hovers: first she tucks her clipboard under her arm and pounds furiously at her phone with her thumbs, and he assumes she’s nothing more than distracted. He makes another call. Twenty minutes in, she’s still there, her pen moving in a suspicious way that indicates idle doodling. He watches, making vague noises of assent every few minutes while the old man on the other end prattles on about the war — which one, he isn’t sure — and the _damned Democrats._

His words, not Declan’s.

When he’s finally able to set the phone back in its cradle, Declan looks up at her and says, unkindly, “Is there a reason you’re still here?”

Helen looks down her nose at him. “Your mark has left the building,” she says. When she drops her arms, he realizes she’s doodled a cartoon version of him in the margin of her paper. He doesn’t bother getting a closer look, though, as his head quickly snaps around to look across the office.

Sure enough, Peter Simmons has disappeared. “Fuck,” he says, under his breath. He stands, grabbing his blazer off the back of his chair.

Helen says, “Why yes, lowly intern Declan, of course you may take a lunch break to stalk an aide to the future vice president of the United States. By all means.”

He shoots her a glare and sets off. By the time he gets to the elevator, he realizes she really has no intentions of leaving him alone anytime soon. “Helen,” he says in a low tone as he waits for the doors to open, “ _what_ do you think you’re doing?”

Blandly, she says, “Coming with you.”

“No,” Declan says, “you’re not.”

“Yes,” Helen says, “I _am_.”

He steps closer, until the two of them are toe to toe on the office’s cheap carpet. It’s reminiscent of every time he’s ever fought with Ronan: lips thinning, muscles tightening, blood boiling. Declan wonders when he became this person.

He wonders if he’ll ever find a way to become something better.

He wonders if it matters.

Of its own accord, one of his fingers jabs accusingly at her sternum, right above the collar of her highly sensible blouse. His voice is like ice when he says, “You may think you know a damn lot about my family, just because our brothers are fucking idiots and don’t know when to leave something alone. But the thing is, you don’t. So do us both a favor and stay out of this.”

She does nothing more than lift one finely peaked eyebrow. The corners of her lips are twitching, and he has that same distinct impression he had at that party, weeks ago, that she’s laughing at him. Frustration wells up in him, tearing at his skin, flooding his veins.

Helen tilts her head and says, amiably, “You fascinate me, Declan Lynch.”

The elevator dings, and she steps in, careful to keep her heels clear of the gap. Her purse is already dangling from one arm, though he doesn’t remember her picking it up.

It doesn’t occur to Declan that he’s frozen in shock, so unused to being belittled that he’s been rendered motionless, until she snaps her fingers impatiently, sticks her free arm between the doors, and says, “Are you coming, or are you planning to take up residence as the office’s new house plant?”

Recovering himself, he flips his blazer over one shoulder and steps into the elevator. Once the doors slide shut, Declan presses the button for the basement. Helen frowns at him. Casually, he says, “What? You didn’t think we were doing something as plebeian as _walking,_ did you?”

And she laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

* * *

 

His car smells like lemons. As they leave the parking garage, his fingers clenched around the gear shift, something slides out from beneath the passenger seat. Helen picks the dark object up, turns it over in her hands.

Declan’s heart stops. “Put that back,” he snaps, but she continues to examine the pistol, toying with the safety, staring down the barrel. At the next stoplight, he snatches it from her hands, checks that the safety is on, and tosses it in his backseat.

She says, “I thought Democrats were very anti-gun.”

He makes a noise of distinct frustration at the back of his throat. “Do you ever stop thinking about politics?” he asks, eyes scanning the sidewalks, on the lookout for any sign of Peter Simmons.

“No,” Helen says. “Do you?”

Declan finds that his answer is much closer to hers that he’d like, and so he says nothing, pressing the car into third gear. Five blocks later, he backs into a parking spot — Helen makes an appreciative noise, apparently charmed by his ability to parallel park — and they get out. There’s a sports bar on the corner that Peter Simmons has been known to frequent.

His hand is on the handle of the entrance when Helen says, “You have a plan, don’t you?”

He reconsiders his initial impulse to hold the door for her and walks inside, leaving her to follow. He sits at the bar, leaning his elbows on the counter; sure enough, Simmons is sitting at the opposite end, sipping at a glass of beer and watching the soccer game that’s being shown on TV.

Helen joins him a minute later, looking unamused and out of place on her own bar stool. She says, “I’ll take that as a no.”

Declan shrugs and orders a beer. She changes his order to two waters. “No drinking during the workday,” she says blithely, “or I’ll have to fire you.”

“You’re not in charge of that.”

He’s been watching her closely, and therefore catches the exact moment when she wishes she could roll her eyes. Instead, she sips at her water and watches him back for a long and unnerving amount of time, all without blinking. At last, she says, “I’m in charge of everything.”

Someone changes the TV station from sports to CNN. He sighs. “I wish you would go away,” he says.

“So you can murder him in peace?” Helen wipes a piece of lint off of her manicure. “Where’s your finesse, Declan?”

“Fine,” he snaps, turning to face her. “If you were me, and you stood to lose a brother or two to a psychopath any day soon, what would you do?”

She doesn’t have the grace to look sorry. Instead she says, “I would blackmail him. Obviously. What makes you think he’s a psychopath, anyway?” Helen looks down the bar to where Simmons sits. He’s already looking at them, so she waves. He smiles sheepishly, looking very much not like a psychopath.

Declan says, “He used to deal with my father. Dear old dad made him a promise of astonishing proportions, and then he died before following through. Somehow, he got wind of Ronan after —” He clears his throat. “After October.”

“When you say astonishing proportions —”

“I mean that Niall could probably have pulled it off, but if Ronan so much as tries, the effort will probably kill him. If he’s forced to try, he’ll die.”

Helen bites her lip, nods succinctly, and kicks him in the shin. “Incoming,” she mutters, taking a long pull from her glass of water.

Peter Simmons materializes next to them in a way that reminds Declan eerily of that Noah kid who used to hang around Monmouth, the one who Ronan won’t talk about anymore. Simmons says, “What a coincidence to find not one, but _two_ of my coworkers here.” What he means is: _I know you’re tailing me._

Declan opens his mouth, but Helen beats him to the punch. “Nice to see you again, Simmons,” she says. What she means is: _Go to hell._

Simmons says, "As always, Helen," spears a meaningful glance at Declan, and then turns on his heel and leaves.

Declan relaxes his hand from where it's been gripping the edge of the bar, and Helen lets out a sigh. “Game, set, match,” she mutters. “Until next round.”

He can’t help but agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all remember Gansey's doodles in his journal, don't we? Well, I've decided that's a family trait, because the idea cracks me up. Also, as someone who lives 15 minutes from D.C., I can confirm that the part where they find a parking spot in 5 seconds, right next to where they need to be, is 100% inaccurate.   
>  In any case, thank you so much for the response to the last chapter! Hope this one was alright :)


	3. Volley

Monday night, Declan finds himself staring at the ceiling of his apartment, mulling over the day’s events. It’s late, and he should be sleeping, but he can’t seem to find the energy to remove himself from his couch, or even just to shut his eyes.

He’s heard it said that the years right after college are always loneliest. Whoever said that must have been an idiot, though, because he’s still in college and he’s lonely as hell.

Listlessly, he thumbs through his emails: One from Georgetown, reminding him to register for his fall classes. One from Senator Gansey’s campaign — so, probably Helen — reminding him that she has a press conference on Wednesday and there are still 5,000 things to be done before then.

Declan groans, covering his eyes with his arm. Even the thought of work is making him tired. But there’s no respite: within a minute, his phone is ringing, loud and insistent. The caller ID tells him it’s Ronan calling.

He doesn’t think he’s ever answered the phone so quickly in his life. “What’s wrong, Ronan?” he barks the minute he hears the call go through. Anxiously, he runs a hand through his hair and knocks his knee against the side of the couch.

The last time Ronan called him of his own volition was in October.

Someone on the other end who is decidedly not Ronan says, “Uh, nothing.” A throat is cleared. “This is actually Adam. Parrish,” he adds, as if Declan might forget who his brother’s boyfriend is. “I’m just borrowing his phone.”

“Oh,” Declan says. And then, “What did you need?”

Parrish clears his throat again, and Declan is reminded of how he’s always felt a little creeped out by the guy, much in the same way he’s always felt a little creeped out by Ronan. Something about the two of them is just so _other_ , so ethereal, that it almost makes sense how drawn to each other they seem to be.

Finally, Parrish says, “There’s been some weird stuff going on with the ley line lately. I can… _feel_ it shifting. The psychics don’t know what’s going on, either. I thought maybe — Have you heard anything?”

What Declan knows about ley lines can be condensed into three words: _Do. Not. Touch._ Even the thought of them sets him on edge. He debates, briefly, mentioning Simmons, but the man is as bland as a cornstalk. The idea that the two things might be related is unthinkable, and so he says nothing save for, “No, can’t say I have. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Parrish says. Somewhere in the background, there’s the sound of tires squealing. “I’m sure it’ll sort itself out soon any—”

“How is he?” Declan interrupts, the words bursting from his mouth before he can think to stuff them back in. He still remembers the way Ronan was after Niall’s death as if it was yesterday: the drinking, the brawling, the racing, the tattoo. Their fragile relationship aside, Declan can’t help but acknowledge the small part of him that worries that Aurora’s death is going to eat the same hole back into Ronan’s heart.

But Parrish tells him no such thing. Instead he says, “He’s good actually. And trust me when I say that I’m as surprised as you are.” There’s the sound of squealing tires again, closer this time. “He’s actually trying to teach Blue how to drive stick right now. I think I should probably go make sure they don’t kill each other first.”

His tone is apologetic, and if they were face to face, Declan would wave it off and simply walk away. As it is, he says, “No problem. Tell him I said hi. And Matthew, too, when you see him.”

“Okay.”

And then his apartment is quiet again. He sighs and gets up to wander about; his fridge is empty, it turns out, save for a package of half-eaten cottage cheese, which he doesn’t even like, and a battered apple. He frowns at the offending contents and moves to his bedroom, where he pulls on a pair of sweatpants and drops his shirt on the floor. He feels restless, now, unsure what to do with himself.

Well, not unsure. He knows what he’s going to do. He just wishes that none of it had to be done.

He brushes his teeth for a long time — the last time he went to the dentist, the man told him he was destroying his gums — and then he practices his smile in the mirror, wondering if it looks as fake to everyone else as it does to him.

Politics, he decides, is a bunch of bullshit.

He’s on his way back to his room when he hears what sounds like his front door opening and closing. Soft footsteps patter across the floor. Instantly, his every nerve is alight, ready for a fight, ready for a threat. He retreats to the bathroom, where he keeps a second pistol in the medicine cabinet, and flicks the safety off. Then he moves forward, back towards the front door. There’s a vague outline of a person near it, toying with his alarm system, trying to guess the code.

Unbelievably, they get it right.

Training his gun on them, Declan takes a deep breath, flips on the lights, and —

“What the _fuck_ , Helen?”

She turns, scowling when she sees the gun that’s pointed at her face. “I was proving a point, asshole. Will you put that thing down?”

He does so, but only slowly, only grudgingly. “What point, exactly,” he asks, “needed to be proved so badly that you had to _break into my apartment_ at _one in the morning_?”

Helen shrugs, looks him up and down. He realizes he isn’t wearing a shirt. The longer she stares, the more he feels his pale skin beginning to flush deep red, and the angrier he feels. “Did you need something,” he snaps, all venom, “or did you just come here to ogle me?” He is, suddenly, all venom, and neither of them seem to know what to do with that.

“If I can break into your apartment,” she says, tucking her hands into the pockets of her jeans, “don’t you think that Simmons could, too?”

Declan steps forward and rests his forearms on the back of the couch. He hangs his head, feeling weary and ancient. He says, “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” but it doesn’t carry the same bite he’d thought it would.

Helen seems unbothered by this prospect as she sets her purse down on his coffee table and sinks onto the couch inches from his arms. She props her feet up on the table, and this, he thinks, is the most bizarre part of the night: Helen Gansey is wearing _sneakers_.

“The point,” she’s saying, tilting her head back to look at him, “is that you’re approaching this as if Simmons only exists during the workday, when in reality, he probably does most of his dirty work at night.”

Declan glares down at her. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I’d signed up for the Helen Gansey Critique Board.”

She smiles, guileless. “No one ever does.” Helen folds her hands in her lap. “Dick’s got insomnia, did you know that?” And it sounds like a comment out of left field, but as with everything Helen does or says, Declan is sure this has a _point_ to it.

He says, “I did know that. Ronan doesn’t sleep, either.” That, he knows, is more by choice, though, than circumstance. He can’t say he understands it, but then again, there is very little about Ronan that Declan can understand.

Declan never dreams, after all.

“Anyway,” Helen says, “all I’m saying is, we’re probably both already predisposed to sleeplessness. May as well make use of it.”

He doubts he’s really predisposed to going without his usual amounts of sleep, but he also realizes that if he doesn’t go after this asshole now, he may soon be too late to do anything. “Helen Gansey,” he deadpans, “are you asking me on a date?”

She laughs, and it’s not the one she uses at political functions, the _ha. ha. ha._ that makes you feel as though she must be laughing at you, rather than with you. This one is almost punched out of her, as if she can’t keep it in. She says, “Yes, Declan. Want to go entrap a wicked politician with me at one in the morning on this lovely Monday night? My treat.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Fine,” he says, wandering off to find a shirt and maybe some shoes. “But I’m driving.”

* * *

 

“This car,” Helen says as she settles into the passenger seat for the second time in twelve hours, “is the paragon of everything I hate about men.”

“So sorry to disappoint,” Declan says flatly. The streets of Alexandria and, soon enough, D.C., are relatively quiet this time of night, only one or two cars passing them by, all the good politicians tucked safely in their beds.

The crooked politicians, Declan decides, must take the Metro.

They’ve gone several miles, moving from the rather suburban area of Alexandria into the historical center of D.C., when he finally decides to ask, “So. You and Simmons?”

Helen snorts and tells him to turn left onto the nearest street. After a brief squabble over whether or not it is actually _legal_ to turn left onto said street — he says it isn’t, she says he’s a wuss — which Declan wins, she finally starts talking. “We went out to dinner a couple of times last year, when I was trying to convince him to come work for my mother. I didn’t know about — this.”

Declan gags. “Isn’t he twenty years older than you?”

She huffs out a breath. “It wasn’t like _that_ , you ass. In any case, I’m twenty one, therefore whatever I choose to do with myself is absolutely none of your business.”

“Obviously,” he says. “How on earth did you miss this sort of thing, though?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself for the past twelve hours,” she grumbles. This time when she tells him to take a left, he can find no reason to object, and so he obliges.

They’re soon long past the nice, cleaner part of D.C., the one that’s carefully maintained for the sake of tourists and national pride. Northeast D.C. is a decidedly different monster, its buildings squatter and more tarnished, made from a neglected sort of brick. The sidewalks are cracked.

“What would Mr. High and Mighty be doing around here?”

When he looks over at Helen, he finds her offering him an unimpressed glance. “Did you do _any_ research, Declan?”

He shrugs. “Kind of figured I’d just corner him in an alley, shoot him, and walk away. It’s worked before.”

“Well, it won’t this time.” She drums her fingers on the center console. “He’s not just some shady buyer. He has connections, people who will come looking for him and start asking all the wrong questions if he disappears.”

“Fine,” Declan says. “What’s he doing around here, though?”

“He owns a nightclub. It was hard to trace — I had to go through several layers of offshore accounts to figure it out — but it would make sense if it were a cover for something else.”

They pull up to the curb a little ways down the street from the isolated, brightly lit building. Declan checks his watch and says, “We should be back in three hours, tops. And no drinking, please.”

“I thought we’d already established that I don’t drink on the job,” she says, one eyebrow raised. A loud group of club-bound kids passes them, jostling them to the edge of the sidewalk. Helen brushes an imaginary piece of lint from her sleeve. “If there has to be any talking,” she says, “let me handle it.”

He looks over at her sharply. “This is my problem,” he says. “What makes you think I’m about to let _you_ take the helm?”

“The fact,” she says, “that you can’t keep a cool head to save your life.”

If he could argue that point, he would. But it’s always been the case; Niall had a rage burning beneath his skin, a recklessness that was begging to get free, and when he died, he passed it on to his oldest sons. In their own ways, they are both fuses, waiting for a spark.

Or at least they used to be. Ronan seems to have found a way to douse himself in water, to keep himself away from the fire.

Declan wonders if he’ll ever be that lucky.

At the doors of the club, Helen puts a hand on his arm and looks at him seriously. “Don’t say anything stupid, and don’t let him know how much you care, okay? That could get us both killed.”

Declan stares down at her for a long time, then nods curtly. “But if it comes to it,” he says, “you’re not stopping me from throwing punches.”

They go inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, my small children. I lov them. Feel free to come scream with me about them on [tumblr](http://www.softlykaz.tumblr.com), and the next chapter should be up soon!


	4. Carve

The first thing Helen does once they’ve stepped inside, one hundred dollars poorer, is curl her lip in distaste. Declan looks around, and he can understand immediately what it is about this place that so offends her: to their left, a couple appears to be trying to consume one another, while to their right, a young man vomits on the ground. The DJ at the front is yelling loud and incessant words while the crowd jumps erratically.

Ashley loved nightclubs, much to Declan’s eternal confusion. On the rare occasion he allowed her to drag him out for the night, she would take him to some high end place with overpriced alcohol. He would get drunk, and she would dance with strangers when she thought he wasn’t looking.

It’s something of a relief to know that he’s not expected to have a good time tonight. He leans close to Helen and says, “First time?”

She bats him away. “Do I look like the kind of person who likes to scream and vomit on a Monday night?”

They both know that she doesn’t.

Helen takes him by the arm and leads him to the bar, pushing him into a seat. “Stay here,” she says, “and watch for anything.”

 _Anything_ is a very broad term.

“Where are you going?” he asks, feeling oddly like a child being put in time out.

“To find some people,” she says, adding a vague gesture to complete her vague statement before disappearing into the crowd. The thought crosses his mind, briefly, there and then gone, that she should be careful, and then he remembers that this is Helen Gansey, the woman who can do anything.

He orders a water and sips it slowly, watching the people around him carry on. Earlier, Helen suggested that blackmail would be the optimal course of action, but Declan hasn’t exactly had time to figure out Simmons’ weaknesses.

He misses the days when villains worked alone and refrained from being multi-faceted humans.

It’s a long time before Helen returns, but when she emerges from the crowd, she’s smiling. Declan soon sees why: There’s a man, maybe a little older than them, trailing behind her, an eager smile on his face.

“So, you’ve finally come to your senses and decided to invest,” the man is saying.

Helen seats herself on the stool next to Declan and faces this stranger where he’s still standing. It takes only a moment to realize why she’s done it: seated on the bar stool, Helen can look this man in the eyes. She says, “I’m still on the fence, Gregorio. I told you. In any case, I’d like to keep this between us, for now. Pete has been after my investment for quite some time, and I’d like to surprise him.”

“Of course.” Grigorio darts a glance to where Declan sits and says, “Who’s he?”

Helen says, “No one of import.”

Declan snorts. “Doesn’t she wish,” he says, pulling out his wallet. Inside is a fake ID, the one Ronan dreamed for him right before everything went to shit, the one he still carries around against his better judgement. According to it, Samuel Ross is from Chevy Chase, Maryland, and will be twenty three next month. He says, “I’m Ms. Gansey’s lawyer.”

Grigorio examines the ID. “Awfully young for a lawyer, aren’t you?”

“We went to high school together,” Declan explains. “Longtime friends and all that.”

Grigorio gives him one more skeptical once-over before turning back to Helen. “What can I get you in order to convince you to invest?”

Helen clears her throat. “I’ll need tax returns, of course. A list of current investors. Pete’s next prospective venture and his plans for it.”

“That sort of information isn’t what we usually provide to potential investors, Ms. Gansey. Those are confidential company documents.”

“And if I were to leave a… _hefty_ thank you gift in return?”

Grigorio makes a vague noise of consideration and asks, “For the company?”

“I was rather thinking,” Helen says, dusting off the shoulders of his jacket, “for you. Seeing as this little transaction remains between you and me.”

The man nods, arms folded across his chest. “When?”

“Let’s say that if you get me those documents by the end of the week, I’ll get you the cash by next Wednesday.”

They shake on it, and then the man merges back into the crowd and Helen lets out a deep sigh, nabbing Declan’s half-empty glass of water to chug the rest. “I hate lackeys,” she says, “almost as much as I hate the rest of this place. Shall we?”

Declan nods and follows closely behind on the way out. There’s still that restless energy thrumming beneath his skin, begging him to punch something, begging him to feel alive, but he pushes it down.

Outside, the night air is sweltering. He says, “What if this gets traced back to your mother’s campaign?”

Helen stops and looks at him. She looks much more delicate in the moonlight, much less intimidating. She says, “Would it matter to you?”

Declan scuffs the toe of his shoe against the sidewalk. “I’m not going to let you tear her campaign down for something that’s mine to deal with. I know how hard your mother’s worked.”

She gives him a searching look, one that makes him feel as though he’s been stripped bare, and he doesn’t like it. His watch tells him it’s approaching four in the morning. Helen says, “It won’t be traced,” and they walk back to the car and get in.

They’re halfway back to Alexandria when she shoves a hand across the center console and says, “Your wallet.”

Declan sighs, figures the worst she could do is throw it in the Potomac, and pulls it out of his pocket to hand over. He watches her flip through the leather pockets from the corner of his eye, and wonders when this became his life: driving through D.C. in the dead of night, Helen Gansey sitting quietly in his passenger seat, looking through his wallet, promising to help him keep his brothers safe.

He glances out at the road ahead, and when he looks back at her, he sees she’s pulled out his fake ID, turning it over in her hands, examining it from every angle. “This,” she says, at last, “is incredible. It’s even got all of the fine print on the back. Although you do look a little younger in the picture.”

Declan bites his lip. “Ronan dreamed it,” he says, and it feels like a violation. He has to remind himself that _she already knows_. “Right before I turned eighteen. Before —”

Mercifully, she doesn’t make him finish that sentence. For the Lynch brothers, there has only ever been one Before that matters, and it’s their father’s death. Helen says, “For some reason, I thought you had always hated each other.”

“No,” he says, “not always.”

When they’re back in Alexandria, he says, absentmindedly, “You don’t need a ride home, do you?”

Helen smirks. “Ever the gentleman, Declan. But no, luckily for you, I drove.” He sees it, now, the white Mustang, a relic of another era, parked illegally in front of his apartment building. He can’t help but laugh.

“Thank you,” he says before she gets out. He can’t remember the last time he thanked someone, and she looks as surprised as he feels.

She unbuckles her seat belt and grabs her purse from the backseat. “It’s not as though I’m doing this for entirely unselfish reasons,” she says. “I’m not some martyr. Without Ronan around, I think Dick might lose his mind.”

Helen gets out and walks to her car before he can respond, and so he just continues down the street to his usual parking spot, and leans back in his seat, and wonders when his life became so damn complicated.

* * *

 

There’s no news until Wednesday.

Somehow, Declan’s managed to get himself assigned to door duty at the press conference, handing out pamphlets and directing reporters and various other people to their seats within the auditorium. After an hour, he feels as though his face has frozen permanently in its current position: wide smile, crinkled eyes.

Finally, though, the deluge ends. He slips inside, curious as to what Senator Gansey’s discussing, hoping for a brief moment of relief. It only lasts a few moments. Soon, he sees Helen stomping her way towards him in the tallest pair of heels he’s ever seen, sending death glares at anyone who gets in her way. In her hand is a rather thick manila envelope.

With a jerk of her head, she motions them out the doors. There are still people milling about outside, apparently uninterested in listening to the Senator’s speech. Helen, Declan notices, has the envelope in a death grip.

He says, quietly, “Those are the papers?”

She glares at him, jimmies open the lock on a janitor’s closet, and they both step inside. Helen is careful to re-lock the door behind them before sagging against it, letting out a long sigh of relief. “Fuck,” she whispers. “That was stressful.”

He wants to ask her why this couldn’t wait, but at the same time he knows that every minute spent _waiting_ is a minute that Simmons uses to get closer to what he wants, while they still struggle to find a way to take him down.

The lighting in the room is dim, just barely enough for them to be able to read the papers. Their shoes are touching thanks to the tight quarters. It’s hot, too; Declan sets his suit jacket on a shelf and rolls up his sleeves. “It’s not a bomb, you know,” he says, equally quiet for fear of being overheard.

“It may as well be,” Helen says, opening the envelope and extending the first packet of papers to him. He accepts them, scanning the tax returns quickly.

“So Simmons doesn’t know how to manage his money,” Declan observes. “He’s practically bankrupt.”

Helen nods. “Which means two things: First, he’s spending that money on something big. Low-ranking aide or not, my mother pays hefty salaries. And second, he’ll be desperate for more.”

“Fine,” Declan says. “That’s something. What about the list of investors?”

She pulls out the next paper, then frowns. “This isn’t just current investors,” she says slowly. “This is everyone who’s ever worked with or given money to Peter Simmons.”

He takes the list from her and looks quickly for any name he might recognize. As he does it, he asks, “Anything on his next ventures in the magic envelope?”

There’s a bit of rustling, and then Helen says, “No such luck. Anyone of interest on there?”

Declan finds his finger hovering over a name that feels particularly familiar and, for some reason, makes him think of October. He says, “Seondeok. I feel like I know her from somewhere.” He racks his brain for a few more seconds, and then says, “That bee kid. You know the one.”

“Henry Cheng,” Helen helpfully supplies.

“Yes,” he says, “that’s it. This is his mother.”

Her mouth has just started to form the shape of the word _oh_ when there’s a knocking on the door that makes them both startle. Helen’s back slams into the door. “Anyone in there?” asks a muffled voice from the other side.

Declan wonders how hard he’d have to punch someone to knock them out. He clenches his fists, and Helen says, “Why do you always think violence is the answer?”

Then she reaches out and untucks his shirt.

For the second time in a week, Declan Lynch finds himself saying, “What the _fuck_ , Helen?” She ignores him, instead tugging on his tie until it looks artfully undone. Her fingers tousle his hair briefly, and when she starts to undo the top few buttons of her blouse, he finally begins to get it.

“Are you insane?” he hisses, shoving all of the papers back in the envelope. She, in turn, tugs her hair free from its chignon, letting it cascade past her shoulders. The person on the other side of the door knocks again.

Helen says, her voice high pitched and giggly, “Just one minute, sir.” Lower, she says, “Put the envelope in your waistband, under your shirt. Don’t forget your jacket.”

The second it’s done, she pulls the door open, pushing her hair back from her eyes with one hand while her other hand closes around Declan’s arm in a death grip. “Sorry about that,” she says to the scowling janitor. “My boyfriend and I found the door unlocked, and, well…” She laughs again, high pitched and fake.

The janitor glares at them as they walk away, and Declan is sure that his face is more flushed than the time Ronan swore at him for three minutes straight on the front steps of St. Agnes. “I hate you,” he says as Helen pulls them behind a vending machine and does her shirt back up.

She smirks. “It worked though, didn’t it? Not to mention, now we have a lead.”

He grumbles and starts to redo the buttons on his shirt, only to find her hand stopping his fingers. Her skin is warm, and he is suddenly very aware of how long it’s been since he touched another person other than to shake hands.

Helen says, “Don’t bother. Debauched is a good look on you.” And then she’s moving back down the hall, towards the auditorium doors, leaving Declan to try and calm his heartbeat and remember how to tie his damn tie.

This is not how he thought his Wednesday was going to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in the books I vaguely remember reading that Declan may only be a year older than Ronan? Well, for the purposes of this fic, Declan is two years older. Oops. Anyway, hope you all liked this chapter! Sorry it wasn't as long as the last one; hopefully I'll make up for it with the next one :)


	5. Approach

He’s on his way out of the office on Friday when his phone rings. Declan presses the down button for the elevator and pulls it out of his pocket. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize. He says, stiffly, “Declan Lynch.”

On the other end, Helen Gansey cackles. “Oh, Lord,” she says. “Do you have _any_ friends?”

Declan turns around to scan the office, knowing she hasn’t left yet. He may stay late, but Helen always stays later. It’s not hard to catch sight of her, standing directly across the room, separated from him by a glass wall. She waves. He offers her a choice finger and steps into the elevator.

“Is there a reason you couldn’t just talk to me in person?” He presses the button for the garage and stares at his reflection in the mirrored elevator walls. He looks tired, he realizes. He’s losing his touch.

“This way,” Helen says, “I don’t have to listen to your aggravating protests when I tell you that you and I are going to Henrietta tomorrow morning, so meet me at Sibley Hospital at seven.”

Declan pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Helen, we have work —” he starts.

She says, “We’re calling in sick. See you then, Declan,” and hangs up on him.

He only barely resists the urge to throw his phone at the wall.

* * *

 

The only redeeming factor of their trip to Henrietta is that Helen gets him coffee. The non-redeeming factors include the early hour, the turbulence, and the fact that she insists on talking the entire way through their headsets.

At one point he says, rather crabbily, “Do you ever shut up?”

She doesn’t even spare him a glance. “You’re lucky I need two hands to fly this thing,” Helen says coolly, “otherwise you can bet your ungrateful ass I would reach over, unbuckle you, and throw you out of this helicopter.” There’s a pause, which Declan uses to wonder just how much landing on the cornfield below them would really hurt, and then she adds, “I’ve disposed of men for less, you know.”

He scowls at his empty coffee cup. There are now no redeeming factors to this trip.

It doesn’t take long for her to start up again, only this time she’s armed with questions. “I know you did business with Henry Cheng and Seondeok last fall,” she says, “so how come you seemed to forget them both?”

Now that she knows for sure he’s awake, Declan doesn’t see any way to avoid answering. He says, “I generally only remember the assholes who try to con me. And Seondeok, while a hardass, was not an asshole and did not try to con me.”

He watches Helen’s pearl pink nails drum against the helicopter’s controls as she considers this. “Alright,” she says. “What do you think she wanted with Simmons?”

That’s an easy one. “What everyone in our circle wants,” he says. “Dream things.”

“How did that work for your family? I was under the impression that once a dreamer dies, the dream ceases to work.”

In the distance, Henrietta is just barely visible. Declan says, “It only works like that when the object has a life force, from what I can tell.” He lets himself think of his mother for only a moment, and then he continues. “Not to mention, not all dream things are made to fly, or to float, or to breathe. Sometimes it’s as simple as a deck of cards with all of the numbers facing backwards.”

Helen looks amused at the idea. “Fine. So you’ve been trading dream things?”

Declan shifts. “Not so much anymore. I was only in it to clean up Niall’s messes, anyway.”

It’s silent for a little while after that. He thinks he catches a glimpse of the Barns to their left, but he can’t be sure through all of the mist and the dust. They’re nearly upon the town when Helen says, “You never call him Dad, you know.”

Declan looks out the window and says, “He never called me his son.”

He tries not to think about it too much, these days — wherever Niall is, he’s sure that he’s paying dearly for his mistakes — but sometimes the old burn of being oldest but least favorite still creeps back in when he isn’t looking.

Helen lands the helicopter on the roof of Monmouth in silence, and he is at once grateful for the reprieve and sorry that he said anything at all. Sorry that she has to know this side of him. Sorry that he had to dredge up the past.

The inside of Monmouth Manufacturing is as tumultuous as usual: books are strewn across the floor, the pool sticks are being used to support an abandoned blanket fort, and there are several mint plants of varying sizes scattered throughout the main room.

Richard Campbell Gansey III looks up from where he sits in the middle of it all, a king presiding over his kingdom, and says, genially, “Helen, you came.” His smile is brilliant.

From the bed that’s been pushed closer to the enormous windows comes a distressed cry of, “ _Gansey!_ You didn’t tell me Helen was coming.”

His smile fades slightly. From behind the headboard emerges a diminutive girl with browned skin and unruly hair. She kicks an apologetic-looking Gansey in the thigh and says, “Hi, Helen.”

Helen smiles back, and the ease in her eyes tells Declan that this must be Gansey’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, said girlfriend’s eyes soon land on him. Her glare is scorching. “Hey, shithead,” she says coldly, before bending down to drop a parting kiss on the top of Gansey’s head.

“Us poor people gotta work,” she says by way of explanation as she heads for the stairs. “See you tonight.” And then the door is slamming and she’s disappeared.

Declan, still slightly caught up on _shithead_ , says, “I don’t even know her name. What did I ever do to _her_?”

Helen laughs. He frowns at her. From the floor, Gansey says, “Her name is Blue. She’s just… fiercely protective of the people she loves, to say the least.” What’s left unsaid but still lingers between them is, _You deserved that. For a lot of reasons._

To Helen, Gansey says, “Is there a reason you two are here? Not, of course, that I don’t enjoy having the company.”

Declan can’t tell if he’s being facetious or is speaking in earnest, and that bothers him more than it should. It’s not the first or greatest thing to bother him about Richard Gansey III — the first and greatest being that he’s a better brother to Ronan than Declan could ever dream of being — but he adds it to the ever-growing list all the same.

Helen is saying, “We’re looking for Henry.”

“Cheng?” As if there might be another Henry they would bother concerning themselves with. “He is… at Litchfield House, last I checked. Packing for the trip.”

She says, “Cool,” and starts for the door. Declan, feeling immensely out of place among this tornado of a room, follows, only to find that she’s paused. “Mom says hi, by the way,” Helen says. “Dad wants you to email him that article you found about the merits of gap years so he can show it to all of his friends.”

In typical Helen fashion, she doesn’t wait for a response, instead opting to simply leave. Declan follows, noting how the stairs creak beneath his feet. This place is probably violating several housing codes, with all its rusted metal and cracked windows.

He remembers, suddenly, that this is where Ronan is supposed to be living. He turns on his heel and starts back up the stairs, ignoring Helen’s aggravated sigh of, “ _Declan_ ,” and pushes open the front door once more.

Gansey has not moved. “Where’s Ronan?” Declan asks.

The boy turns to look at him. Sometime in the last two minutes, he’s acquired a pair of wire frames that age him by forty years. “I think,” he says, “he’s at the Barns with Opal. Should I tell him you’re here?”

“No,” Declan decides, “don’t bother.”

Helen is waiting in the parking lot when he steps outside, the driver’s side door of an offensively large Suburban hanging open to reveal her. He walks around to the other side, gets in, and throws his bag in the backseat.

Finally, she pulls her door shut and turns the car on. “Litchfield House?” she asks.

He’s tempted to pretend he doesn’t know where it is, just so she’ll have to go through the trouble of pulling up her GPS and trying to get more than two bars of cell service, but he resists. The drive is short, and Declan finds himself thinking about the last time he lived in Henrietta and just how much has changed since then.

He can’t tell if things have changed for better or for worse, and that worries him.

The front door of the house is opened by Henry Cheng himself, his hair still standing at an impressive height. “I’ve got to be honest,” he says by way of greeting. “You two are not a pair I would have ever thought to put together.”

Helen says, “Nice to see you, too, Henry. How’s your mother?”

Cheng gives them each a suspicious look. “She’s good. She’s in South Korea right now, though,” he says slowly. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m looking into someone she used to do business with,” Declan answers. “Is there any chance you could get her on the phone?”

The kid checks his watch and says, “Yeah. But make it quick; she needs her sleep.” He pulls a phone from his back pocket and dials Seondeok. When she picks up, they exchange a few quick words in Korean, and then he passes the phone to Declan.

“Seondeok,” he says by way of greeting, all too aware of Helen and Cheng’s lingering eyes.

“Declan,” she replies in kind. “What can I do for you?”

He turns his back to the others. “Peter Simmons,” he says. “You used to deal with him, didn’t you?”

“I did,” she says. “He proved to be difficult to work alongside, though. I wouldn’t recommend dealing with him.”

“That’s — I know,” Declan says. “My father promised him something a long time ago, and I think that he’s still after it, now that he knows —”

“About Ronan,” Seondeok finishes. “You’re right to be worried. Simmons has always been a little more than ruthless when it comes to this sort of thing.”

Declan rubs a hand along his stubble, deliberating. “He won’t go down without a fight,” he says after a minute. “I know that. But does he have any weaknesses?”

On the other end of the line, she lets out a mirthless laugh. “None of the usual kind, from what I could tell,” Seondeok says. “But I will give you this: his brother isn’t the Greywaren.”

The line goes dead. Declan shoves the phone back at Cheng and stalks off towards the car, pressing his fists softly against the windows. He wants to hit something so badly it hurts. He wants to burn something to the ground. He wonders if this is how Ronan always feels.

From next to him Helen says, “I take it that wasn’t as helpful as we thought it would be.”

Declan takes a few deep breaths before saying, “She implied that I should involve Ronan in this. As if he could dream up something to make Simmons disappear.”

“Well,” asks Helen, “could he?”

Now he really does hit the car. It stings his knuckles and is nowhere near as satisfying as he thought it would be. “Yes, Helen,” he seethes, “he could. He and Adam have done it before. Of course they could do it again. But I’m not going to _let_ them. I’m not going to let _him_.”

When he looks back at her, she is the picture of calm, and it grates against his already frayed nerves. She says, “Why not?”

“Because he’s happy, Helen,” he yells, flailing an arm towards Henrietta. Towards the place that took Ronan apart and put him back together in a way that made him stronger, better than he was before. Quieter, he says, “I won’t take that from him. He can be an asshole, but he’s still my brother.”

Helen knocks her knuckles against the side of the car and says, “Alright. We’ll find another way, then.”

It all feels like too much. The politics, the hunt, the twists and the turns that are cropping up every step of the way. He doesn’t know how he ended up here, or how what was supposed to be a simple take out turned into this game of charades.

More than anything, he wants people to stop coming after his family. But wishing for that is like wishing for world peace: it’s never going to happen. He says, “You don’t have to stick around, Helen. I can figure this out on my own.”

She smiles, and it’s startlingly close to the smile she gave her brother this morning. Something in his heart softens. “You’re a mess, Declan,” she says, not unkindly. “ _This_ is a mess. So, yeah, I’m going to stick around. A threat to a brother anywhere is a threat to brothers everywhere, right?”

Against his will, he feels the corner of his mouth tugging upwards. “I don’t think that’s how the quote goes.”

She punches him in the shoulder and heads for the driver’s side of the car. “That’s the spirit. Now, get in. I’m parched.”

* * *

 

Nino’s is as disgusting as always, Declan is displeased to find. They sit in a booth in the back and drink burnt coffee while Helen takes notes on a napkin. “So what you’re telling me,” she says, “is that Simmons wanted a _dream generator_?”

Declan lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “That’s the best I could figure out from Niall’s notes.”

“So Simmons basically wants to be able to think of something and then pull it out of a box.”

“Basically.” She writes this down. He watches, and cannot decide whether to be disturbed or impressed by the uniformity of her letters. After a moment’s deliberation, he adds, “Simmons doesn’t know where Ronan is yet.”

Helen looks up in surprise. “Even after October?”

“The demon unmade a lot of the people who were there,” Declan explains. “The ones who survived either checked themselves into mental hospitals or pretended it didn’t happen. It’s amazing, really — these people are willing to believe in magic, but only insofar as it benefits them.”

“I’ve found,” says Helen, “that a lot of the world works like that.”

She returns to her writing. Declan sips his coffee and looks out the window. “Money won’t keep him away,” he says, almost to himself, “and we’ve got nothing to blackmail him with, and if we kill him the whole world will know something’s up. We may as well give up now.”

Helen sets her pen down and gives him a meaningful look. “Everyone has weaknesses, or even just moments when they’re vulnerable. We’ll find his before he finds Ronan, I swear.”

Declan Lynch is always alone, always lonely, which means that he’s also always in control. Now that he’s suddenly not alone, he finds that he’s struggling to pry his hands from the reigns, to trust that someone else will be able to succeed where he cannot even begin to try.

He says, “Okay,” and hopes that he soon begins to believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am 900% certain that Blue is intimidated by Helen and wants Declan to die. In any case, I hope you liked this monstrosity of a chapter, and thank you for all your lovely comments and kudos :)


	6. Deep

Sunday morning dawns bright and early at the Barns, just as the three Lynch brothers are piling into Ronan’s BMW. There’s a brief tussle for the passenger seat between Declan and Matthew, but he lets Matthew win in the end, because he always does.

It’s an unwritten, unspoken rule between Ronan and Declan, that their youngest brother should be allowed to grow up as happy as he can.

St. Agnes is the same as it’s always been, the familiar statue of the Virgin Mary waiting out front to welcome them back in. Mass is long, but Declan stopped minding years ago: somewhere along the way, the familiar rhythm of the service became less of a chore and more of a comfort.

Afterwards, they loiter on the front steps, Ronan staring at, of all things, his phone. Declan hadn’t realized he was still in possession of it. He understands its appearance, though, once Adam Parrish appears, dressed in his mechanic’s coveralls.

To Matthew, Declan says, “Hey, champ. Let’s go wait by the car, okay?”

Amiably, his youngest brother agrees. Declan leans against the side of the BMW while Matthew chases a butterfly through the grass, then runs up to show him once it’s landed on his hand. It’s a docent, sweet thing, much like Matthew himself, all golden and glowing. It reminds him of why he’s chasing down Simmons in the first place: because to lose any part of this day, this moment, would be unbearable.

When Ronan finally joins them, ten minutes later, he looks more at ease. “Gelato?” he asks. Matthew immediately does a little dance at the prospect and climbs into the backseat without complaint, eager for them to be on their way.

Declan looks back at Ronan when he doesn’t move towards the driver’s seat and finds that his brother’s face has quite suddenly become caught between its former ease and a heart-wrenching sadness. He cuffs his brother lightly on the shoulder and says, “What?”

Ronan looks at him. “Sometimes,” he says, in a rare moment of vulnerability, “he reminds me of Noah. Or, fuck, I don’t know, what Noah must have been like when he was alive or some shit. I just —”

Declan says, “It’s okay. You can still miss him. Or whatever.”

Ronan says, “I know that, shithead,” but they both know that maybe he doesn’t quite, yet, and Declan thinks that what he really means is _thank you_.

It’s not much, but he’ll take it.

* * *

 

The relative peace begins to fray when he’s about three bites into his chocolate gelato, which shouldn’t be surprising after this many years but somehow always manages to catch him off guard anyway. Matthew is in the middle of a story about Anthony Davenport’s pet python escaping in the dorms — Declan shudders at the thought — when Ronan interrupts to ask, “What were you doing down here yesterday?”

Declan shoots him a glare, but Matthew doesn’t seem to mind being interrupted. When he realizes neither of them are going to accept a non-answer, he says, “I was just looking into something.”

“With _Cheng_?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Declan says forcefully.

“So that means we should worry about it.” This, from Matthew.

Ronan snorts. “As if it will do us any good.” There’s a pause, and Declan lets himself believe for a brief moment that he’s off the hook and can once more fade into the background of the conversation, but then Ronan says, “Helen’s here, too, I heard.”

Stiffly, Declan says, “Yes.”

His brother’s grin is shark-like. “You know she’s too good for you, don’t you?”

Declan can feel himself flushing. Ronan’s grin grows, as if it feeds on his embarrassment and discomfort. “We’re not —”

“I don’t just mean in a romantic capacity,” Ronan interrupts. “I mean in literally every capacity imaginable.”

Dryly, Declan says, “Thank you, Ronan.”

Ronan takes a large bite of his mint gelato and says, voice slightly muffled by the quantity of food in his mouth, “Just offering a little perspective.” Melted green gelato drips down his chin.

Declan glares at him, and wonders if they’re allowed to fight on Sundays.

Then Matthew shoves his empty gelato cup into Declan’s hands and says, “Look! Dog!” and the moment breaks, and he can’t tell if he’s relieved that the peace will remain intact for a while longer, or disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to fracture it with his bare hands when he had the chance.

* * *

 

Helen is at the Barns when they finally return, watching reruns of _Kim Possible_ with Opal on the couch. The two make an odd pair, one effortlessly put together, the other a carefree mess, but they seem content with it all the same.

Declan says, “How did you get in?”

She jerks a thumb towards the kitchen. “The babysitters opened the door for me.”

He peers around the corner, into the kitchen, and immediately wishes he hadn’t: Blue and Gansey are making out against the counter as if their lives depend upon it, completely engrossed in each other. Declan makes a vague noise of disgust and, turning back to Helen, says, “Some babysitters.”

“Don’t be such a downer,” she chides. Opal reaches out for Declan, wanting to be held, and he obliges her. “It’s young love,” Helen is saying. “Don’t you remember what that was like?”

Flatly, he says, “No, I don’t.”

Maybe this isn’t completely fair of him. Ashley had been — something. A blip in his pulse every time he looked at her. But love, he knows, shouldn’t leave you feeling as though there’s still a piece of you missing. As though you’re still broken.

It wasn’t her fault really, in the end, that she couldn’t fix him. It wasn’t her fault that it took him two years to realize that maybe nothing will ever be able to turn all of his parts into a whole.

Opal pats his hair, and it makes him feel a little bit better, in spite of everything.

Across the room, Ronan meets his daughter’s eyes and says, “Traitor.”

Declan smiles.

Evening is upon them by the time Parrish makes a reappearance, looking tired, but not as tired as the last time Declan saw him, months ago. He hovers in the doorway as the boy gets himself a glass of water, and then he steps into the kitchen and says, “About the ley line —”

Parrish does not acknowledge him. When he steps closer, into his peripheral vision, Parrish jumps. Water sloshes onto the ground. “Sorry,” he says, gesturing to the left side of his head. “Bad ear.”

Declan moves to the other side. He feels bad for forgetting. “The ley line,” he repeats. “What’s up with it?”

One dusty eyebrow arches coolly. “Why the sudden interest?"

“I have a theory,” Declan says. “Humor me?”

Parrish shrugs. “Not like there’s all that much I can figure out, anyway. The ghosts on the corpse road looked a little weaker this year, the ley line feels strained, and I can barely scry for five minutes.”

“So?”

“So someone’s probably drawing on the ley line’s power, sapping it. It feels a lot like it did when —” Parrish looks over his shoulder, towards the living room, then says quietly, “Like when the demon was around.”

Declan drags a hand along his jaw. “Is there anything that can be done about it?”

“Other than find the person?” Parrish takes a long drink from his glass of water. “Not really, no.” He pauses, then says, “You have someone in mind, don’t you?”

“Like I said,” Declan repeats, “it’s just a theory.”

The other boy worries his bottom lip for a moment or two, his eyes distant, and then he says, “I would recommend acting on that theory, then, and soon. I don’t think any of us want to find out what will happen if the ley line loses too much power.”

“Okay.” Declan’s mind is already running through all of the possibilities, trying to figure out whether Simmons could really be smart enough, precocious enough to try to harness energy from the ley line. Seondeok admitted that he was well versed in the realm of dream things, but it’s hard to tell how far of a stretch it is between those and ley lines for the average person.

Mostly, it’s hard to tell if Simmons even is an average person.

He’s forcefully removed from his thoughts by the sight of Helen sweeping into the kitchen to pat Parrish on the cheek. “Adam,” she says with a smile.

The boy is blushing faintly. “Hey, Helen.”

She glances at Declan. He frowns at her disapprovingly. In the meantime, Parrish makes his escape, and Helen sighs sadly once she realizes he’s gone. “I like that one,” she says. “Very handsome. Very driven.”

“Helen,” Declan says, “I’m fairly sure there’s a law against that.”

“You’re just jealous.” She pokes at the refrigerator magnets for a while, delighted when the skateboard magnet begins to zoom around at a touch of her fingertip.

When she looks back at him, he arches an eyebrow for her benefit. “Am I?” he asks.

She smiles, looking for all the world like the cat who’s gotten the cream. “You tell me.”

* * *

 

They fly back to D.C. in comfortable silence, that evening, and then Declan drives himself home and collapses on his bed and stares at his clock for a long while, watching the minutes tick by.

Usually when he can’t sleep, during the year, he’ll get up and do homework. Now, though, he has no homework to do, and so he does research instead, filtering through the inane depths of the internet until finally his eyelids begin to droop.

He closes his laptop and sets his head on its surface, and then he lets sleep claim him.

Sometimes, he's just too tired to fight anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late, short, filler chapter. I've been pretty sick this week, and this definitely isn't the best chapter ever, but I wanted to get something up before I go on vacation, because my updates will get a little more sporadic then. Thank you for sticking with the story <3


	7. Error

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: semi-graphic descriptions of violence. see the end notes for more details.

Monday morning, it feels as though the entire weekend was nothing more than a fevered dream, from his brothers to the magic and everything in between. It’s a feeling Declan recognizes well: he feels it every time he leaves Henrietta, every time he steps back into the real world.

Compared to the misty fields of the Barns, the office looks monotone and dull. He makes more phone calls, and types up more lists, and generally keeps to himself. These days, it feels like if he approaches anyone, they’ll know his secrets in a second.

Helen did, at least.

And so he eats lunch alone, and smiles politely at anyone who talks to him, and stares so hard at the greying carpet beneath his feet that he’s surprised he doesn’t burn a hole in it.

Occasionally he’ll catch a glimpse of Helen, or they’ll pass in the hallway, but she’s almost always typing on her phone or talking to someone else. He finds it disconcerting: with most people, he can tell almost immediately how it is they feel about him and, subsequently, where they stand.

With Helen, he can tell no such thing — they certainly aren’t friends, but they must be _something_ , right? — and it leaves him feeling anxious and ridiculous.

Tuesday proves to be much the same, only instead of the D.C. streets being flooded with bright sunshine, they’re now flooded with rain. The dark clouds overhead, brightened intermittently by flashes of lightning, do nothing for his lingering gray mood. Adding to the misery is his lack of sleep, brought on by too much caffeine and an unwillingness to go to bed without some sort of concrete lead on Simmons’ activities.

No such leads were found, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit defeat until four thirty in the morning, a decision he now regrets.

On his lunch break, he goes back to that same sports bar that Simmons tends to frequent. The man isn’t there, though, and so Declan allows himself a momentary lapse in judgement and orders a beer, cradling it in his hands and waiting for his half hour of free time to pass.

He sips slowly at the bottle, but the alcohol has done nothing to warm him, he realizes ruefully as he exits the bar. Rain is still falling heavily, and it soon soaks the shoulders of his blazer. He wishes he had remembered a jacket this morning, and he probably would have if he hadn’t avoided sleep like the devil.

He’s walking around a corner when someone grips him tightly by the collar and pulls him backwards into an alleyway. Briefly, Declan thinks _how cliche_ , and then the first punch lands and he’s pinned to the wall.

His gun is still in his car. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself face to face with Peter Simmons. Rain drips down both of their faces. Simmons fists his hands in Declan’s lapels and says, “Stop fucking following me, Lynch.”

Declan kicks him in the stomach, sending him staggering back, and wipes the rain out of his eyes and the blood from his nose. Then Simmons is coming back at him, looking intent on murder. Declan throws a right hook, paired with a kick to the knee, but none of it seems to make any difference. Simmons is stronger than him, and usually that wouldn’t matter, but Declan’s been off his game for a while and they both know it.

Simmons snaps his elbow into Declan’s jaw. A resounding _crack_ floods the alleyway, and it may not be broken, but it sure as hell feels like it. Simmons says, “Just tell me where your dreamer of a brother is, and I won’t have to keep doing this.”

Declan thins his lips and waits for the next punch. It’s not the first time he’s bled for Ronan, and he’s sure it won’t be the last.

His face feels as though it’s been turned into a pulp by the time Simmons lets up again. They’re both breathing heavily. It’s hard to see clearly, through all the blood and rain.

“I should kill you,” the man hisses, his breath sickeningly warm against Declan’s cheek.

Declan spits blood onto the rain-slicked pavement and says, “We both know you won’t.”

Simmons’ hand is tight around his throat, just enough to hurt. “Who’s to say I won’t?” he hisses. “You must be in deep by now. You’ve been looking into me for months, waiting for the opportunity to trail me more closely. You think I don’t know that?”

Black laces the edges of Declan’s vision. Simmons barrels on, saying, “Even if you know about the generator, and the ley line, and Blackburg, you’ll never be able to stop me. How does that feel, Lynch?” His fingers tighten, briefly. Declan thinks he may pass out.

Simmons backhands him, and he feels blood well in his mouth. “Answer me,” the man growls. “How does it feel, knowing I’ll always get what I want in the end?”

Declan says, “Fuck you.” Blood drips down his chin.

Peter Simmons shoves him hard. His head knocks painfully against the brick wall. Everything, he realizes all in a rush, hurts.

Without another word, Simmons walks away, and Declan lets him go.

* * *

 

There’s no one in the elevator when he stumbles back into the building. The security guard gives him an odd look, but Declan mumbles, “I fell,” and waves him off with a flash of his ID card. He gets off on the twelfth floor and avoids the main office like the plague, instead following a separate hallway to the bathrooms. He swipes his keycard and steps inside.

Blissfully, the restrooms are completely empty. Declan leans against the sink and stares at himself in the mirror for a long while, taking in the damage: a magnificent bruise blooms along his jawline. The skin on his left cheek has broken wide in an ugly gash. His bottom lip is split. His right eye is black and swelling. His nose is dripping blood steadily.

When he smiles, blood covers his teeth.

He shrugs off his soaked jacket. He needs to get back to work, but he isn’t quite sure how to explain the damage to his face. It’s likely that if he walks into the office like this, he’ll get fired.

With dismay, Declan realizes that his shirt is soaked through as well. Blood drips onto it. With a sigh, he undoes his buttons and tosses it onto the counter, along with his damp undershirt, before resting his head in his hands, trying to figure a way out of this situation that doesn’t end with him losing his only chance at getting close enough to Simmons to stop him.

Before he can summon an answer, the door to the bathroom opens. His head snaps toward the sound, unease writhing in his veins. Helen Gansey frowns at him from the doorway and says, “This is going to be a fun story.”

She lets the door fall shut behind her. He says, “This is the men’s room.” What he means is, _I wasn’t aware we were still talking._

She says, “The paper towels in here are easier on my tender skin.” What she means is, _Of course we are._ Helen rolls her eyes and takes his face carefully in her hand, turning it this way and that in order to get a better look at the bruises and cuts.

“Who did this,” she asks flatly. Her eyes seem to already know, but she wants him to say it out loud anyway.

So he says, “Simmons.”

Her face turns to stone. “And you’ve been drinking.” He knows, then, that she’s smelled it on his breath, through the blood: the one beer he had. Shame burns a hot flame in his gut, and he says nothing. After another moment of scrutiny, she says, coldly, “Stay here,” and leaves.

Declan stays where he is, only shifting to tilt his head back and finally staunch his nose bleed. Helen soon returns with a first aid kit. Her heels echo loudly on the tile of the floors, and each steps feels like a nail being driven into his skull.

Another glance in the mirror shows the beginnings of a bruise around his throat, curled in the distinct shape of a hand.

When Helen grips his face this time, she’s less gentle. He hisses in a breath as her warm fingers press into his bruised jaw, but says nothing, instead staring resolutely at the ceiling as she dabs at his cheek with rubbing alcohol. It burns, but the pain grounds him.

“How did you know I was here?” he asks when she’s finished.

She gives him an unimpressed look. “The lobby security guard called.” They’re silent as she throws away the bloodied paper towels and checks the bandage on his cheek one more time, and then she says, “Go home. Tomorrow, you’ll tell everyone that you fought a flight of stairs and lost.”

Declan shrugs his shirt back on. “You’re not going to fire me?”

Helen folds her arms and thins her lips, looking as though she’s been deeply tried. She says, “I should.” And then she leaves, just as suddenly as she came, leaving him to fumble with the buttons on his shirt and wonder why the realization that she may be done helping him, done with him period, stings as much as it does. He tries to tell himself that he never needed her in the first place. That he’s better off alone, anyway.

It only works until he’s halfway home, at which point he realizes that just because something’s always a certain way, doesn’t mean that that’s the best way to be.

He frowns, turns his windshield wipers up a notch, and keeps driving.

* * *

 

It’s well and truly dark outside when he finally replays the fight with Simmons. The remembered conversation washes over him, his mind catching on the same piece over and over again: _Blackburg_. He googles it, and it turns out to be a town in Maryland that runs along the same longitudinal line as Henrietta.

His pulse picks up for the first time all day.

For several long moments, he debates texting Helen. On the one hand, she could still be mad at him. On the other hand, she was the one who wanted to insinuate herself into his life in the first place. This is nothing she hasn’t already asked for.

Eventually, he texts, _Found something on Simmons. Call me?_ and then he lies on his sofa and stares at the infomercials running across his television screen. Maybe he really does need a broom that will double as a table leg, he thinks.

It’s a long while before his phone buzzes with a response, jolting him awake. He glances at the screen with blurry eyes and sees that it’s from Helen. _Can’t_ , it says. _On a date_.

He groans and closes his eyes, wondering what poor sap she’s trying to con this time. Tall, probably, and rich, too. Maybe it’s a game to her, making men fall in love with her, just like sleeping around used to be a game to him.

It’s hard for Declan to pinpoint when that lost its appeal. Maybe it was when Ashley started doing it, too, and he realized just what a shitty habit it was. Maybe it was when he realized that it never made him feel better to spend a night with a stranger, only worse.

In any case, he hasn’t done anything of the sort in a long time, and he is reminded of this acutely as he watches more infomercials and presses his bruised face deeper into the cushions of his sofa. The air is so still in this apartment, always so still. So quiet.

He’s just started to drift off again when someone knocks on the front door of his apartment. Declan stumbles up to answer it, pulling open the door just enough to see who’s on the other side at this inconsiderate hour.

It’s Helen, of course. He doesn’t know why he even bothers feeling surprised, at this point, by anything she does. “Too tired to break in this time?” he asks.

The corner of her mouth twitches. “Something like that. Are you going to leave me out here all night, or did you want to talk?”

He opens the door all the way and lets her in. “I thought you had a date,” he says as she settles herself on his couch. He hesitates, briefly, before sitting on the opposite end. He won’t be made to feel like a stranger in his own home.

Helen says, “He was boring.”

“Oh?” Declan isn’t well versed in what might classify a man as “boring” in Helen’s book. He also isn’t sure that he wants to find out, but has a feeling that he will anyway.

“He told me I was pretty three times,” she says with a sigh. “And that was before we’d even sat down. I mean, what about my brain? What about my perfect grammar?”

“It must be so hard,” Declan deadpans, “to be beautiful.” It takes him three seconds to realize his mistake, but Helen doesn’t seem to notice, instead kicking off her heels and tucking her legs up beneath her.

“So,” she says conversationally, “what did you find on Simmons?”

Declan pulls up the map on his phone. “Blackburg, Maryland,” he says. “I think that’s where he may be accessing the ley line from.” He adds in what Parrish told him the other day, about the line’s recent irregularities.

Helen considers it all for a long while before saying, “Mom has a meeting in Germantown on Thursday. I’ll get you assigned to door duty again, and then we can get away for a little while and check it out.”

His surprise is a palpable thing; before he can stop himself, he says, “I thought you were mad at me.”

“Yeah.” She lets out a mirthless laugh. “I was. But you think I didn’t know what kind of an asshole you were going into this? I promised I would help you, and I’m not going to break that promise, so stop feeling like you’re walking on nails every time you’re around me.”

Easier said than done, he thinks. He watches as she reaches for his TV remote and flips through the channels for awhile, before finally settling on a documentary about baby cheetahs. They’re quiet, watching the animals prance around on screen.

So quiet, really, that Declan jumps when she says, “You didn’t fight back.”

“When?” The combination of his apartment’s dim lighting and the late hour have all lulled him into a feeling of safety and exhaustion. With every passing minute, he finds it harder to stay awake.

“Today,” Helen is saying. Her eyes are still fixed on the television. “You clearly didn’t fight back. Why not?”

He offers a weak shrug. The truth is, sometimes he can’t see the point of it all. Sometimes it’s easier to just take the beating and move on.

She looks at him, now, and her hazel eyes are surprisingly soft. “You should take better care of yourself,” she says. “You can’t keep — You can’t live like this. This isn’t a life.”

“Yeah, well.” He bites the inside of his cheek, feels the fatigue settling deeper into his bones. “It’s _my_ life.”

Declan can’t tell when, exactly, he drifts off. All he knows is that when he wakes up at three thirty in the morning, someone’s covered him in a blanket and put a pillow beneath his head. There’s a note on the coffee table that says, _Went home. Took your orange juice. Don’t be late to work!_ At the bottom, Helen’s signed her name in loopy script.

He can’t help the small smile that creeps onto his face as he crumples the sticky note in his fist, even if he feels more confused now than he did before. At least when Helen and he were merely cordial, he was close to understanding her.

Now, he feels as though he’s taken a wrong turn and lost any hope of figuring her out.

But maybe, he’s beginning to realize, that isn’t really such a bad thing after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, Declan gets beat up by Simmons.
> 
> To skip violence: read until paragraph that ends with "devil", skip down to paragraph that starts with "without another word". read until paragraph that ends with "steps inside", skip down to paragraph that starts with "before he can".
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Hopefully I'll be able to get an update up in the next few days :)


	8. Inside-Out

Helen's white Mustang is exactly as one would expect anything belonging to Helen Gansey to be: refined, well-maintained, priceless. The 1969 convertible gleams in the Thursday sun, eagerly awaiting its driver in the parking lot of yet another bland auditorium.

Helen says to Declan, as they walk, "Do you have mud on your shoes?" The sidewalk beneath their feet in nearly pristine.

He says, confused, "No."

Helen sniffs. "Good. Can't have you getting my car dirty." They get in; she drives in stilettos, he learns, a fact which makes her seem all the more brave in his mind. The countryside of Maryland consumes them quickly, reaching out and absorbing them with rolling hills and sprawling underbrush and winding roads.

The silence is thick but not cloying. Something about the brutality of Tuesday unearthed a startling realization: this agreement between them will not be so easy to break, so simple to undo. And to Declan, that feels like a breath of fresh air.

So often people mistake Ronan for the bull in the china shop, of the three Lynch brothers, but the truth is that Declan is the one with a serpentine tongue and hands built for breaking things. He is the one whose clumsy fists have shattered hearts to pieces. To know that Helen will not break so easily is a small mercy, one he can scarcely allow himself to believe.

Around them, the trees are verdant and abundant. Helen says, "Can you get that?" He realizes, suddenly, that her phone is ringing.

He picks it up. “It’s George,” he informs her, reading the caller ID. She waves him onward, and he wonders if she’s even registered what it is that he said. Still, he answers it, because he is nothing if not easily entertained by the pedantic troubles of others.

On the other end of the line, George says, “Helen, I’m so glad you picked up. I’ve been trying to reach you for ages.”

She huffs out a disgruntled sigh, and Declan catches the corners of her mouth as they turn down, just briefly. In that moment, she is no longer superhuman, sleek and unattainable. In that moment, she is just a sad girl, listening to the voice of someone she used to know.

And then the moment passes, and she is herself once again: sharply aggravated, haughty, impervious. She says, “I didn’t mean to pick up.”

Declan is still trying to process the person he glimpsed in that brief moment, and so he misses an opportunity to laugh, a fact he will later lament greatly. As it is, George, still unaware of his presence, says, “How have you been?”

“How am I ever?” Helen asks in return, and all present know that the answer is _busy_ , or perhaps _smashing_ , or maybe even _living my best life_. It’s hard to tell at this specific moment in time which of the three she might be gravitating more strongly towards.

George laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. Declan imagines it can’t be an easy thing, to be drawn and quartered by Helen Gansey. “You never change,” the man says, “do you?”

Helen purses her lips tightly. “Did you need something, George? I don’t exactly have time to catch up about the good old days.” Her voice is sharp, to the point. With Helen, there never seems to be any room for unnecessary extravagance, unprecedented sentiment.

Declan thinks, then, of the exclamation point she dotted so precisely on the note she left on his coffee table, Tuesday night, and something in his chest clenches.

Through the phone, George is saying, weakly, “I was just wondering how you were doing, I guess.”

“I thought we’d already covered that,” says Helen. Her eyes sharpen with a newly arrived idea, turning her face shrewd, and if Declan knew better, he would be wary of this side of her. She continues, her voice cool, “Is that all? Declan and I are on our way to lunch, and we can’t be late.”

Declan offers Helen a questioning look. She, in turn, offers him a devil’s smile. George says, “Declan _Lynch_? Tell me you’re not dating that asshole.”

Helen presses her foot harder to the gas pedal, and the car lurches forward, the speedometer racing to keep up. Wickedly, she says, “The one and only.”

Declan, deciding he’s had enough, ends the call and drops her phone heavily back into the car’s cupholder. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, and then he says, “Are you _fucking_ kidding me, Helen?”

Her hands, he notices, are white-knuckling the wheel. She says, tightly, “You’re never going to see him. Don’t get so worked up over nothing, Declan. You sound like a child.”

“You can’t just —”

“I did,” she cuts him off. “So deal with it. You’re giving me a headache.”

He wants to argue longer, louder, wants to put this unbreakable thing between them to the test, but her hands are still tight on the steering wheel, and the corners of her mouth have turned down again, and he remembers what it’s like to feel sad even when you know that you shouldn’t. Even when you know that you made the right decision, that you did what you wanted to do.

He remembers what it’s like, and so he says nothing. Instead, he looks out the window and lets her collect herself on her own time as the countryside rolls by beside them, easing them onward, onward, ever onward.

* * *

 

Blackburg proves to be nothing more than a pit-stop town: a single main road winds through its center. On one side is a gas station; on the other, a grocery store. Houses are scattered here and there, lingering in various stages of forgottenness. The loudest sound is the wind.

There’s a field, near the northern city limits. Declan looks down at the map on his phone that Parrish sent to him earlier this week, then back up at the rows of corn. With a sigh, he tosses his suit jacket in the back seat and tugs his tie off. “This is where the ley line should be,” he says.

Helen, calmer now than she was an hour before, pulls to the side of the road and turns the car off, examining the field with distaste. “I don’t suppose you know _exactly_ where it might be,” she says. And then, “We should have taken the helicopter.”

Declan shrugs and gets out. The humidity is fierce, and he can feel the sweat as it begins to trace a thin line down his back. Phone in hand, he steps into the field, moving stalks away from his face with irritating frequency.

It takes a few moments for Helen to catch up with him, and when she does, he can’t help but pause in surprise. Her white blazer is long gone, leaving her in a pale pink blouse and white slacks that she’s rolled up to her knees. Her feet are bare. Catching his gaze, she says, crossly, “You could have told me we were going to be stomping through a cornfield.”

He smiles sharply. “Where would be the fun in that?”

The walk seems to take forever, cornstalks lashing at their arms with every step. The sun bears down on them heavily, a never-ending heat at their backs. Declan wonders if perhaps this was a fool’s errand, dragging Helen out here, chasing a name that Simmons let slip, seemingly accidentally.

The thought strikes him, now: this could all be a trap. A fabrication. His blood runs cold despite the heat, and he stops suddenly, turning to find Helen much closer behind him than he expected. Sweat beads at her forehead, such a startlingly human thing.

He says, “I forgot —”

She presses something warm and solid to his chest: his gun. “Some of us,” she says, “know how to think ahead.”

Declan scowls at her and tucks it in his waistband. Saying _thank you_ would feel too much like giving her the upper hand, and so he says nothing.

They continue.

The sun has just begun to sink towards the horizon when they reach a clearing in the field, small and circular. In the center there bubbles a stream of some sort, emerging from the ground and then disappearing deeper into the stalks. Footprints of several shapes and sizes abound; large rocks, clearly not native to this place, lie to the side of the running water.

The only sounds are the slow trickle of water and their breathing, and for a moment, it feels as though they might be the only two people left in the world. Then Helen says,

“Is this on your map?”

Declan pulls out his phone and zooms in to where the ley line should be. He says, “I can’t tell.” And then, “Do you want to follow the stream?”

Helen snorts. “What I _want_ is a deep tissue massage and a glass of champagne,” she says, “but by all means, let’s follow the stream.”

And so they do just that, wading back into the sea of corn stalks. It strikes Declan as strange, how tall the stalks are, how dead, even as planting season has just ended. He doesn’t know what to make of it, though, and so he resolves not to consider it. There are bigger curiosities dogging his steps right now.

They’ve been walking for awhile when Helen moves to stick her feet, now rather dirty, in the water. Declan, from the other side of the thin stream, reaches over and puts a hand on her arm. He says, “I wouldn’t do that.”

She raises a challenging eyebrow, and he wonders what it is that drives them both to be so damn contrary at every opportunity. “Oh?”

He lets go of her arm. The memory of her skin lingers on his palm. “You didn’t grow up with magic the way I did,” he says. The back of his neck prickles; from the very first day he could speak, his father swore him to secrecy about this. About the Barns, about Aurora, about Matthew, about Ronan. To speak of it now, even to someone who already knows, feels like a betrayal of the worst kind.

Helen says, “And how did you grow up with magic?”

He thinks of his mother, so beautiful and kind as to be unreal. He thinks of his father, so sure of the idea that his legacy, his work, would endure for ages to come. Perhaps he didn’t _grow up_ with magic, he realizes, so much as he was _raised_ by it. “My mother was a dream,” Declan says, eventually, “and my father was a dreamer. Magic is all I have ever known.”

They’re not walking anymore, simply facing each other, the stream burbling softly between them. “Then why,” she asks, “would you distance yourself from it?”

Declan sucks his lower lip between his teeth and glances away, towards the horizon. He remembers the way his father’s eyes would skim across him at the dinner table, eager to land upon Ronan. He remembers sitting in one of his father’s barns, his dreamer of a brother showing him his beautiful, terrible, whimsical creations. A king among his kingdom.

He says, “It was never mine to hold onto,” and he can tell that she doesn’t understand, because how could she? Helen Gansey did not grow up with an impenetrable fence between herself and the rest of her family. She did not grow up _normal_ in a family of _other_.

He says, “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She looks like she wants to fight that statement, but she keeps her mouth closed and her thoughts to herself, and he’s grateful.

Sunset is upon them in all of its pink and gold glory, painting the sky a masterpiece, by the time they reach the next clearing. There, the stream disappears once more into the ground; where it leaves off, a line of damp dirt picks up.

Only, it isn’t damp, exactly. Helen crouches down to touch it before Declan can stop her, and when she brings her fingers to her nose, she grimaces. “That’s kerosene,” she says.

Nothing makes sense.

Behind them, there’s a faint rustling in the corn stalks. Declan’s whirled around in an instant, gun in hand, finger poised over the trigger. It’s nothing more than a bird, though, and Helen laughs.

He flushes and puts his gun away. “Should we keep walking?” he asks. His watch tells him that it’s 3:23 in the afternoon, but that doesn’t seem quite right. He wishes he knew when it had stopped working. He wishes he knew how to keep all of this straight.

Helen says, “I don’t particularly want to be out here after dark. I say we come back in the helicopter this weekend, get an aerial view of the place.”

The way he sees it, he has no choice but to agree, and so they turn back the way they came. The first clearing is still waiting when they reach it once more, but something about it feels slightly off. Upon closer inspection, he realizes that there are fresh footprints in the dirt, ones that don’t belong to either of them.

The back of his neck prickles again.

Quietly, Helen says, “Let’s go, okay?” But Declan is already approaching the opposite side of the clearing, looking at the line in the dirt that he failed to notice before. Or perhaps it simply wasn’t there. It stretches away from where the stream begins, straight and narrow, as though someone drew it with a single finger.

He puts one hand on his gun. Gingerly, with the toe of his shoe, he drags the loose dirt of the field over the line, towards himself, erasing a part of it.

In the next instant, the world’s silence seems to shatter: a bird caws loudly. The wind gusts through the clearing, prompting the stalks to whisper and rustle ominously among themselves. Worst of all, though, is this:

Helen screams.

And screams.

And screams.

Declan’s feet are moving towards her before his mind can even process it, this sound which he never would have expected to hear leave her mouth. She’s crumpled in the dirt, hands cradled in her lap, head bowed. Her hair is wild with heat and exhaustion. In front of her, the stream is still burbling, though the area around it is sodden, as though it leapt from its trough of its own accord.

He crouches next to her, puts a hand on her shoulder. He says, quietly, “Helen?”

She looks up, and her cheeks are stained with tears. “My hands,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “Look at my hands.”

He does, and then he wishes he hadn’t. Her palms are badly burned, the skin bubbling with remembered heat. Some of the burn has spread, here and there, to her wrists, her arms, almost as though —

“The stream,” he says. “It did this?”

She nods, nothing more than a sharp jerk of her chin. She won’t meet his eyes any longer, and she holds her hands in front of her as though they’re dripping poison. Declan wonders if she has ever been this vulnerable, before.

He wonders if she’s afraid.

His phone’s clock is stopped, the same as his watch, and he has no cell service. He says, “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

She stands, albeit shakily, hands still held away from her body. There are various spots dotting her torso, in addition to the burns on her palms, wrists, and arms. Her shirt is patchy and coming apart. Helen says, “I’ll be alright,” and they can both hear the lie, plain as day.

Still, neither of them are willing to acknowledge it, and so Declan simply holds the corn stalks away from her burns, and they slowly make their way back to the place they left her car. Twilight settles around them at long last, heavy and close. Guilt gnaws a hole in the pit of his stomach.

The Mustang is untouched. Helen, her face still stained with tears of pain and surprise, says, “The keys are in my left pocket.”

Declan hesitates. “I should probably just call an ambulance.”

She fixes him with a fierce stare, and something within him sighs a breath of relief as he realizes that she is still herself, despite the pain. He reaches into her pocket and takes the car keys, shivering when their elbows brush. “Are you sure?” he asks, opening the car door for her.

Helen doesn’t answer until he’s seated in the driver’s seat, adjusting the rearview mirror. “What do you think the paramedics would have to say,” she asks, “if they found two vice presidential campaign aides stranded at the edge of a dead cornfield with second degree burns and no sign of a fire?”

Declan reaches over and buckles her seatbelt for her, rather than respond, because they both know exactly what would happen, what might be said. She glares at him. He says, “Safety first, kids,” just to aggravate her, and is pleased when it works.

But then she says, “I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?” and his lungs deflate.

He starts the car, turns them towards the hospital. Helen leans her head against the window and closes her eyes. A long time passes before Declan musters the courage to say, quietly, “I’m sorry.”

And still, it’s no good. She’s already asleep.

* * *

 

It turns out that she does, in fact, have second degree burns. There’s talk of skin grafts, but Declan manages to wave the doctors away once they’ve treated her burns superficially, just enough to keep them from getting infected. Helen sits in her hospital bed in the emergency room and frowns at nothing in particular.

From the chair next to her bed, Declan says, for the second time in as many hours, “I’m sorry.”

She looks at him and shrugs. “Not your fault.”

“Actually,” he says, “I think it maybe was.” He can’t be sure yet, though, and so he won’t elaborate. He wants to go back and look around more before drawing any conclusions or making any assumptions that could cause further damage.

Helen’s eyes are starting to glaze over when he says, “Should I call someone?”

“No.” Her voice is small, diminished by the solemnity of this place, and it all feels so wrong. None of this, he thinks, should have happened, least of all to her. Without warning, Declan finds himself standing, a desperate need to be alone clawing at his throat, demanding that he get out.

He says, “I’ll be back,” and then he’s out the door, feet pounding on the cement stairs, carrying him down, down, down. Outside, the air is still humid, still cloying. He presses his forehead to the wall of the hospital building and allows himself three seconds to regain his composure before pulling out his cellphone and dialing a number that is all too familiar. It’s a Hail Mary, and he knows it, but guilt has him by the throat and he doesn’t know what else to do.

The phone rings seven times, but much to his surprise, someone on the other end picks up, at long last, their voice gruff.

“What is it this time, asshole?”

Declan breathes a sigh of relief. “Ronan,” he says. “I need a favor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a firm believer that Helen wears pantsuits, and no one can convince me otherwise. In other news, I'm sorry about making my kids suffer and for not updating in over a week. I've been on vacation, so I haven't had much time to write. Next chapter should be up soon to make up for it, though, and hopefully it won't be such a downer :)
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed it and thank you, as always, for reading <3


	9. Underspin

The hospital insists on keeping Helen overnight, and so by the time she wakes up the next morning, Ronan and Declan Lynch are already arguing fiercely in the hallway outside her room. Ronan clutches a small, unassuming plastic jar which Declan occasionally grabs for.

“Tell me what this is all about,” Ronan hisses for what feels like the hundredth time. “You expect me to dream you a pot of lotion that heals burns, drive four hours up here to deliver it in the dead of night, and then walk away with no explanation?”

Declan says, “Yes, I do expect that, you asshole. Now, give it here.” He grabs for the jar once again, but Ronan dances just out of reach and he misses.

“You know I’m going to have to tell Gansey,” says Ronan. “Right?”

Declan smiles, all teeth. “I forgot,” he says, cruelly. “You’re still his fucking lapdog, aren’t you?”

Ronan grabs him by the collar with his free hand, and he thinks, _Finally_. They grapple with each other, Ronan still keeping the lotion far out of reach. Minutes, or maybe hours, have passed before someone coughs to announce their presence and the brothers whirl around, hands at each other’s throats.

Helen Gansey is standing in the doorway of her hospital room, looking rumpled but, other than that, no worse for the wear. Her hands and wrists are thickly bandaged, and her eyes are disapproving. She says, “What are you doing?” Her voice is still thick with sleep.

Declan pushes Ronan off of him and straightens his shirt out. “I got you stuff,” he says, stiffly. He can’t meet her eyes. “For your hands.” Saying it aloud now, it sounds ridiculous and obvious, and he can feel himself flushing despite his best efforts.

Ronan snorts indecently. “ _I_ made you lotion,” he says, brandishing the jar. “You’re welcome.”

Helen looks between the two brothers, curious, and then says, “Alright,” and disappears back into her room, completely ambivalent. Declan takes advantage of Ronan’s distraction to snatch the lotion from his hands.

His brother looks between the jar and the door, and then he smirks. “You owe me one,” he says. “Big time.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Declan mumbles. “Thanks, I guess.”

Ronan, still smirking, offers him the finger on his way out. And then Declan is standing by himself in the hospital hallway, an innocuous-looking jar of magical dream lotion cradled in his hands. He chokes out a breath around the guilt that’s still tearing at his throat, and then he goes into Helen’s room, closing the door behind him.

She has her hands in her lap and her cellphone pressed between her ear and her shoulder. At the sound of the door closing, though, Helen looks up. “Hold on,” she says to the person on the other end. “I have to go.” And then she hangs up and gives Declan a searching look. “What?”

He clears his throat and brandishes the jar once more. “This should — fix your hands, I guess.”

“Oh.” She looks surprised, and he wishes she wouldn’t always think so little of him, even just once. He sinks into the chair next to her bed and reaches for her bandages.

“May I?” he asks.

She nods, and he undoes the gauze, slowly but surely. Helen winces where it’s stuck to her burned skin, but other than that the both of them are silent and still. Declan can feel Helen’s eyes on him as he focuses intently on her hands, and he finds it discomfiting.

When at last the bandages are gone, he opens the jar and sees a smooth, silky white cream awaiting him. Setting the lid on the bedside table, he takes a dollop on his finger and then pauses, unsure of himself. Helen, however, seems unfazed by the whole situation, and so he gently takes her right hand, careful to avoid her burns, and smooths the cream across her palm.

She flinches, hard, and he pulls away quickly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Are you —”

“It just stings a little,” she says sharply. Her cheeks are pink. “Don’t worry about it.”

He returns to the task at hand, smoothing the lotion along her damaged skin. When both of her hands are sufficiently covered, along with her arms, Declan gestures vaguely at her torso. “You were burned there, too, weren’t you?”

Something in his expression must amuse her, because Helen laughs, loud and mocking. “For someone who is regularly referred to as a ‘man-whore’ by my brother, you’re rather prudish, you know,” she says.

Declan glares at her, because how could he ever explain that he has never been so intimidated by a woman as he is by Helen Gansey? He would never hear the end of it. So instead he simply says, “Your hands should be better in an hour, once you wash the cream off.” He screws the lid of the jar back on tightly. “You can take care of the rest yourself.”

And he could be wrong, and he’s sure he is, but he thinks, for just a moment, that Helen looks almost disappointed. He’s a little disappointed in himself, too, if he’s honest.

But he refuses to dwell on it for much longer, and so he stands and leaves the room, taking the elevator to the lobby, where he sits and types up a document for the campaign and, when that gets too dull, flirts with a nurse.

Helen appears after two hours, shooing doctors away from her. Her hands are as pale and unscarred as usual, and she seems much steadier, now, and finally the guilt is letting him go. She says, “Why are you still here?”

Declan pockets his phone and pushes himself up from the waiting room chair. “You’re my ride,” he says, “remember?”

“You could have asked Ronan to drive you.”

He gives her a meaningful look. “I already asked him for one thing,” Declan says. “Like hell I’m going to give him the satisfaction of watching me ask for another.”

The parking lot is empty, the sun creeping upwards from the horizon. Helen says, “It was nice of you to ask him for that cream.”

He puts his hands in his pockets and tries to remember everything he has to do today, instead of thinking about Helen and the stupid lotion and Ronan and _the stupid lotion_.

“Whatever,” he says.

They’ve just entered the outskirts of D.C. when he finally speaks again: “You still want to check out the field this weekend?”

“Sure,” she says, amiably, as though he’s asked her to coffee instead of to a volatile cornfield. He wonders how long it took her, exactly, to perfect this inability to be overly affected by any one thing. He wonders if she’d teach him. Because there are still days when his blood boils in his veins and nights when he wants to do nothing but sob into his pillow, and he doesn’t know how to control it, how to stop it, how to ignore it.

For all of his aloneness, one would think that Declan might have learned, by now, every thing there is to know about himself. But the truth is that he has not, because for the longest while, Declan did not want to know himself. Beyond _ordinary_ , beyond _second favorite_ , nothing else mattered.

And now that it does, he doesn’t know what to make of himself, of the pieces left over.

He and Helen walk onto the twelfth floor, close enough that one might assume they were together, but far enough apart for that togetherness to maintain an air of ambiguity.

And still, when he settles himself at his usual table and dials the first number on today’s list, the intern on his left gives him an unimpressed look and says, “I suppose we can’t all rely on our skills to earn promotions, hmm?”

The next intern down from her snickers and says, “I didn’t even know men were allowed to sleep their way to the top. But hey, it’s the 21st century, right?”

Declan presses the receiver to his ear and listens to the dial tone. The intern to his right says, conspiratorially, “Don’t worry about it, bro. I’d bang her too, if I had the chance.”

Declan picks up the phone and turns in his chair to face the window behind him, gritting his teeth. Six months ago, he thinks, he might have let it all slide. He might have cracked a smile, joined in on the laughs, kicked his feet up on the table and regaled the group with fantastical stories.

Now, though, the thought of any of it makes his stomach clench. _This must be growing up_ , he thinks. He hates it.

The work is tedious, as always, and Simmons does nothing apart from the ordinary, all afternoon and well into the evening. The boredom of it all is a constant threat to his sanity. And still, he works. He waits. He watches.

Tonight, he’s the fourth to last person to leave, trying to make up for the work hours he’s missed. When he collects his things and makes his way to the elevator, the only people left milling about the office are Simmons, Senator Gansey, and Helen.

The elevator doors are on the verge of closing, Declan on the verge of breathing a sigh of relief, when a rather feminine hand is stuck between them. Helen steps inside. Declan frowns at her and pushes the button for the basement again, tired of work, tired of idle talk, tired of keeping his eyes open.

She says, “You’re looking at me like I have ebola.”

He frowns deeper. “I’m not,” he says.

“You are. You’ve got that little furrow between your brow, and you’re leaning away from me. What happened?”

The elevator numbers tick lower. Declan shrugs. “I’ve just been thinking,” he says, “that maybe we shouldn’t talk to each other in the office.”

The corner of her mouth ticks upwards. He can’t see what about this situation is amusing, but he supposes that’s just one of Helen’s many charms: she can always find something to laugh at. She says, “I hadn’t thought the lowbrow commentary of a few lackluster interns would bother you that much.”

“You’ve heard it too, then?”

Now she really does laugh, but it’s bitter and mirthless. “Declan,” she says, condescension sweeping into her tone, “I work in a man’s world. As does my mother. Do you think I didn’t grow up listening to strangers whisper that my mother only married my father for his social standing? Do you think I haven’t heard every scrutinizing comment about my most recent interaction with any male who has a 401K?”

Her eyes have sharpened to knives. “So, yes,” she continues, “I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it all before.” Her eyes find his. “But you need to let it go, because there’s no beating it. And honestly? I think you and I could do a whole lot worse.”

He wants to stop her, to ask her what, exactly, she means by that, but the elevator’s already come to a stop on the first floor, and Helen’s already tossing a flippant, “See you Saturday!” over her shoulder as she leaves.

Declan watches the doors close, and wonders how much longer he’ll have to keep living like this, how much longer until he knows his brothers are safe, how much longer until he can sleep through the night, how much longer until something — _anything_ — in his life is simple.

He fears that the answers may all be _forever_ , and he doesn’t know if he’ll make it that long.

But he does know that he has to.

There isn’t any other option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with this chapter. Sorry that it's so short and more of a filler than anything, and that Declan is maybe a little too emo. I'm coming down with writer's block and I'm still on vacation so I haven't had much time to write, but I felt bad about not updating in a week. Thanks to those of you who are still keeping up with the story, and next chapter should be better :)


	10. Tiebreak

Declan has decided, once and for all, that he hates helicopters. There is nothing enjoyable about flying about in a giant metal bird, held aloft by a single crucial bolt, while the wind pummels your face and numbs your hands and makes you wish for a swift death.

Helen, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying herself greatly: For the first five minutes of the flight, she hums an incessant tune into the microphone of her headset, until finally Declan is forced to remove his own headset in order to preserve his sanity.

He wonders if she’s enjoying herself so much simply because she can sense how much he is decisively _not_ enjoying himself.

The flight is only an hour, but it feels like an eternity. He thinks about how he should be at work right now, watching Simmons, making phone calls, and doing everything within his power to preserve even an ounce of his own political dignity.

He thinks about Helen’s vague hum of approval when she saw him this morning, his jeans crisp and his t-shirt soft. He might not forget the sound of it for a long while.

He thinks about how tomorrow morning, he’ll wake up at the crack of dawn and drive down to Henrietta to see his brothers, and then in the afternoon he will return to D.C. to face their would-be intimidator.

He comes back to himself as Helen slaps his arm and gestures, frustrated, at the headset that dangles around his neck. Reluctantly, he puts it back on. She says, “Look down.”

Declan does, and his heart lodges in his throat.

The cornfield is below them; from this height, it doesn’t seem nearly as large nor quite so eerie. He can see the stream where it bubbles up, in the center of the initial clearing they found, and follows it with his eyes to the next clearing, where the stream drops off and the line of kerosene begins. From there, the kerosene continues on to yet another clearing, where it ends at the center and —

“Helen,” he says, calmly, “is that dirt shifting back and forth in a straight line?”

She looks at the area he’s pointing towards, and says, uncertainly, “It’s probably just the force from the helicopter.”

And still, both of them can see that nowhere else is the dirt moving in such a fashion. The line continues on to a fourth clearing, where it ends and a deep line of unfathomable darkness takes up the course, carrying itself towards the fifth and final clearing. There, it meets with that simple line Declan dragged his foot through, the last time they were here, the one that looked as though it had been drawn with a human finger, the one that caused the stream to burst forth.

At the center of the pentagon of clearings is another, smaller than the rest, empty. Helen says, “What does it all mean?”

Declan rubs at his eyes. “I think,” he says, “Simmons is the one causing problems with the ley line. He’s working on a spell.”

“But how? And to what end?”

He thins his lips. A part of him wants to leave this all be, right now, before they get in any deeper: surely if Simmons is so invested in harnessing power from the ley line, he won’t be needing Ronan. Surely he won’t be looking for him. But the evidence is all to the contrary: Simmons’ urgency, his business contacts, the way he’s been asking around the community for months, now.

It’s only luck that’s kept him away so far, and Declan knows better than to trust in luck.

He also knows better than to underestimate the power of human want, of human greed. The last time he made that mistake, Joseph Kavinsky was wandering the halls of Aglionby, a dream thief. Declan had assumed, then, that Kavinsky’s own self-destruction, his own power, would be enough to satisfy him.

It wasn’t until Matthew was tucked in the trunk of a white Mitsubishi and Ronan spent days passed out, drunk, on the hood of a thousand other cars like it, until Joseph Kavinsky went up in flames spewed by a monster of his own creation, that Declan remembered how misery loves company.

Simmons has been after this generator for nearly as long as Declan has been alive. Only a desperate, miserable man is willing to wait two decades for something like that before taking matters into his own hands.

And it is always desperate, miserable men who do the most rash things, who hurt the most people.

Declan clenches his fists. To Helen, he says, “Let’s go to the Library of Congress.”

She gives him an odd look, but there must be something distressed in his face, because she doesn’t dispute his request. Instead, she turns the helicopter around, and they fly back to D.C.

* * *

 

The deeper archives of the library are blissfully quiet. Declan allows himself one calming breath, and then he continues on, Helen at his heels, looking for anything that might indicate what it is they’re dealing with.

“So,” Helen says, “the pentagon.”

Declan looks up in confusion. “The Pentagon?”

“No.” She sighs. “The pentagon. Little P. There was water — at least, something that looked like water — moving dirt, kerosene-soaked dirt, a line drawn in the dirt, and a literal void.”

Declan pauses, and looks at the books to his right. They’re all on ancient Greek philosophies. He says, “Say that last part again.”

“A literal void? You know, deep and dark and —”

He pulls a book down from the shelf and flips it open. “The Ancient Greeks believed that there were five core elements,” he says as he turned pages. “Did you know that? I learned it in my Western Philosophies class last semester.”

Helen says, dryly, “Fascinating. Any other insights, Einstein?”

Declan glares at her. “Yes, in fact, I do have some,” he says. “They believed these elements were earth, water, fire, air, and aether.” He pauses at the page he’s been looking for. “Aether,” he says, “was sometimes also referred to as the _void_.”

It all slides into place — the moving dirt, for wind. The kerosene, for fire. The line in the dirt, for earth. The deep black for aether. The stream, for water.

Helen looks over his shoulder. “‘A condensed list of elemental magic spells and their uses in Ancient Greece,’” she reads. Her breath is warm against the side of his neck; he tries not to think too hard about that. “So, theoretically, all we have to do is find his spell and break it?”

Declan sighs. “That’s only half of the problem.” He looks over at her. “Did you ever find anything incriminating in that nightclub of his?”

“Aside from it being a cover for his magical dealings? No. To expose it would do us more harm than good, at this point.”

“And there’s nothing else on him?”

“No,” she says. “There’s nothing even remotely suitable for blackmail.”

Declan closes his eyes, just for a moment, and says, softly, “Fuck.”

Helen pats him on the shoulder and takes the book from his hands, perusing the pages until she finds something that looks similar to the spell Simmons seems to be working on. It’s a complicated thing, one that draws heavily on the power of the ley line.

For a few long moments, the two of them stand there, side by side, between the stacks. Helen reads and rereads the pages, and Declan stares up at the ceiling and tries to remember how this became so complicated.

Helen says, “It’s going to be okay, you know.” She hasn’t looked up from the book.

Declan looks at her, at the way a strand of her hair has escaped from her chignon to curl around her ear, at the way she stares, so intently, at the book. He says, “You can’t know that.”

She snaps the book shut and re-shelves it. “For someone who supposedly does this all the time,” she says, “you’re rather glum, aren’t you?” He moves to take the book down from the shelf once more, and she bats his hand away. “The spell can only be broken by the person who initiated it,” she explains. “We have no other option than to do something about Simmons.”

He frowns at the floor. Were this any other case, he would shoot the man in the kneecap and wait for him to skip town, lesson learned. But Simmons is an aide to the woman who will, in all likelihood, be the next vice president of the United States; he wouldn’t skip town if his life depended on it.

Not to mention, this is a man who’s been waiting decades for a dream, a miracle, a wish. He won’t, Declan realizes, stop toying with the ley line until he gets what he wants, or finds Ronan. And Simmons won’t give up on looking for Ronan until he’s either dead, or wishing he was.

“We have nothing on him,” Declan says flatly. “Is that correct?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then we’ll just have to fabricate something.” He folds his arms across his chest, the idea already burning a hole in his sanity. He begins to pace. “Something so awful that it would ruin his political career if it got out — and I mean really, truly, completely destroy it. Something so awful that he would wish he had never even heard the name _Lynch_.”

Helen smiles, and it is not gentle. “Lucky for us, we know the best fabricator this side of the Mississippi.”

Declan stops in his tracks. “No,” he says, firmly. “No. Absolutely not. I already said —”

“Declan,” she says. “That was when we still thought we had other options. It doesn’t matter how many contacts you and I have; we won’t find anyone who can make it look as real as Ronan can, and talking to people we know means running the risk of Simmons finding that out. Are you really willing to chance that?”

He snaps, “Maybe I am.” And then, “You don’t understand —”

“What?” she asks, sharply. “What don’t I understand? What it’s like to have a brother in danger? I watched Dick traipse around the world for three years, a single EpiPen in his pocket, looking for a myth. He _died_. Twice. You think I don’t know what it’s like to fear for someone?”

“I know,” Declan says, voice deathly calm, “that you know what that’s like. I was going to say that you don’t understand what it’s like to have nobody else left.”

He leaves, not caring if she follows, and then he drives himself home, leaving her white Mustang alone in the parking lot. His apartment feels emptier, somehow, than when he left that morning, and it makes him want to hit something, so he does.

Unfortunately, the kitchen counter hits back. He spends a long time running cold water over his bruising, aching hand, thinking about how everything he does is for nothing. What point is there, after all, to keeping the bad guys away if Ronan and Matthew are just going to have to end up dealing with them anyway?

What point is there to trying to keep them safe if he can’t do it on his own? That’s no safety. They deserve better than that. Than him.

He doesn’t sleep much; he worries that his old insomnia is coming back. After high school, he was sure he’d shaken it, sure he’d become some semblance of a functioning human being, but it would seem he was wrong.

When his alarm goes off at four in the morning, he’s already wide awake. He stands up and puts on his black slacks and a crisp white dress shirt, and then he ties his tie with the utmost precision and throws on his blazer. His hair is a wreck, and there are dark circles beneath his eyes, but it’s the best he can do.

He grabs his car keys off the counter and leaves, taking the elevator to the ground floor and then hunting for his car in the dark. He can never remember where it’s parked, it seems.

The sun is just cresting the horizon when he gets on the freeway. He has four hours to make a decision.

Four hours.

It may not be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well friends, the poll has been taken and the votes are in: I am officially the Worst. Sorry for the long wait. Promise, promise, pinky promise next week's chapter will be fun and not a filler and maybe even a tearjerker. Many thanks, as always, for your lovely comments.


	11. Ace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch out for unnecessary and excessive swearing!

In the end, the decision is made for him:

He arrives in Henrietta. Matthew hands him a cup of coffee, already half gone, which Declan accepts gratefully anyway. Ronan is scowling. Nothing about the situation is unusual until the moment they’re walking up the steps to mass and Ronan says, voice whittled down to a lethal point, “Helen called.”

Declan clenches his fists, then tosses his coffee cup in the trash. Trying not to sound defensive, he says, “And?”

Ronan opens his mouth to spit some vitriol, but Matthew interrupts, waving them over and saying, “Come _on_ , guys!”

The oldest Lynch brothers share a nasty glare and go inside.

Afterwards, Ronan punches Declan in the parking lot. Declan lets him. He thinks he might deserve it. Then they all drive back to the Barns, Matthew in the passenger seat of his Volvo while Ronan speeds ahead. With anyone else, the silence would be tense, both parties eager not to discuss the reason the driver has blood on his face at eleven on a Sunday morning, but not with Matthew. The boy manages to keep up a one-sided conversation for much of the trip, his stories requiring no active audience.

If Declan is honest, it’s something of a relief.

The feeling dissipates as soon as he steps back into the house he once called home: Blue Sargent and Richard Gansey the third are sprawled across the couch, Henry Cheng at their feet. Their eyes are glued to the television.

Declan says, “I was under the impression that you all were going on a road trip.”

“In August,” Sargent says. “Now fuck off.”

He doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or take offense, and so he removes himself from the room and goes looking for his brothers. They’re in the kitchen, Ronan at the stove, Matthew at the microwave. Adam Parrish is trying to teach a very confused Opal, seated on the counter, how to play patty cake.

Suddenly, he realizes that he doesn’t want to be here. Declan says, “I’m heading out.”

Matthew makes a disappointed frowny face.

Ronan says, “No the fuck you’re not.”

Parrish says, “Ronan, _your child_.”

Declan soon finds himself being dragged from the room. It occurs to him, briefly, that Ronan and Helen might get along very well. And then Ronan’s shut the door to his bedroom behind them and has folded his arms across his chest and looks ready to commit murder.

Unwilling to give even an inch, Declan folds his arms as well. “What did she tell you?”

“Peter Simmons,” Ronan spits. “All of it. And now you want me to hand over some forged documents, apparently, and _orphan hands_.”

“Cannibalism is universally frowned upon,” Declan says with a shrug. “As is the murder of children. It’s a foolproof plan.”

“No,” Ronan says, “what it is is _fucking insane_.” He heaves a deep breath and says, “Why can’t you just leave it alone? Why do you always have to meddle in things like this?”

Declan realizes, then, which parts Helen left out. Which parts he always seems to leave out, too, even though they’re the most important. Even though they’re probably the only ones that really matter. He says, “I’m just trying to protect you, you asshole,” because the Lynches are not good at using their words, least of all with each other. Least of all when it really counts.

Ronan bristles. “I don’t need your protection.”

“That’s a decision that should be left up to me.” Declan sighs and rubs at his eyes. “All I need are the documents and the evidence, and then we don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

“No. No. I think we do need to talk about this some fucking more,” says Ronan. “Who the fuck gave you the right to ask things like this of me, and then not give me a full explanation? Who gave you the right to even _think_ you have to protect me?”

Declan finds that that old, familiar rage is boiling just beneath his skin again, and this time, he sets it free. “Dad did,” Declan yells, and his voice is an explosion. Ronan falls silent, biting viciously at his leather bracelets. “Dad made some fucking stupid deals while he was alive, Ronan, and now it’s my job to clean them up. Because if I don’t, you or Matthew could end up dead. Okay?”

“Of course that’s not fucking okay, you asshole,” Ronan yells back. His face is flushed with the volume of it all. “It’s fifteen layers of fucked up, and you should have just told me what the fuck was going on in the first place. How long have you even been doing this? I don’t just mean Simmons, I mean —”

Declan knows what he means. He says, voice quiet around Ronan’s rolling thunder, “Since the day Dad died. That’s how long.” He can’t meet Ronan’s eyes. “It wasn’t any of your business then, and it isn’t any of your business now.”

“We’re talking about people who want to kidnap, harass, and murder me,” Ronan hisses. He stabs an accusing finger at Declan. “How the fuck is that not my business?”

Declan says, tiredly, “Because I said it’s not. Now, you can either hand over the evidence, or I’ll find another way to finish this. It’s all the same to me.” His heart feels as though it’s two sizes too big for his chest.

He just wants this to be over.

He’s so tired of fighting.

But Ronan isn’t. Of the two of them, he has always had the strongest fists, the hottest rage, the biggest burnout. The only way Ronan knows how to fight is with everything he has, everything he is. He says, loudly, “Don’t you dare pull that ‘because I said so’ shit on me, Declan. I deserve to know about things like this. I deserve to be able to protect myself.”

Declan says, “No.”

Ronan’s voice is a hurricane; a crack of lightning; a gunshot in the night. “Why not?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can think to stop them. Later, Declan will realize that he had meant to yell them, scream them, slam them in Ronan’s face, break them across his back. He had meant to make him hurt with the weight of them. Instead, his voice is nothing more than a whisper when he says, “Because I love you.” Unsaid is this: _Because you’re happy. Because you have a real life to live. Because you and Matthew would be fine without me, but I could never be fine without either of you._

Ronan doesn’t say anything in response. Declan doesn’t expect him to. He checks his watch and leaves, ignoring the curious looks from the others as he makes his way to his car.

Soon enough he’s deep into the Virginian countryside, unsure where exactly he plans to go. The thought of returning to D.C. empty-handed and right back where he started stings. The thought of returning to the Barns, at this exact moment, makes him feel sick.

He’s driving through an unfamiliar forest when it comes to him: the last time he told Ronan that he loved him, he was fourteen, and it was Christmas, and they were all happy.

The memory hits Declan hard, knocking the breath straight out of him. After so many months, even years, really, of trying not to remember the way things used to be, this is — unexpected.

It hurts.

It hurts so damn much.

Declan pulls his car off the road, onto the shoulder, and puts his hazards on. Then he sits there for a long time and stares at his hands and wishes, desperately, that things hadn’t changed the way that they did. When he’s wished it to completion, he goes back and unwishes it, because it was a selfish thought, and he can’t deny it.

He’s the only one who didn’t turn out okay. His brothers, as it just so happens, have gained more than they lost, loved more than they’ve hurt. He shouldn’t want to take that from them.

Declan looks up, and watches the sun set.

* * *

 

It’s late and dark by the time he returns to the Barns. The guests have disappeared, except for Parrish, who is fast asleep on the couch, a dreadful Russian novel slipping from his hands. Declan takes it, marks his page, and sets it on the coffee table, then continues on.

Matthew is playing video games under the covers in his room. Declan decides not to call him out on it, for once. At the end of his bed, Opal is curled up happily, looking as though there’s nowhere she’d rather be.

Ronan is on the roof, poking at the legion of glowing orbs that drifts in the air around him. They soften him, their yellow light rendering him an approachable figure.

Neither of them say anything for the longest time, and then Ronan offers him two manila envelopes, both heavy, one slightly sticky. Declan doesn’t say _thank you_ , because he thinks he’s out of words for the day. The night. An eternity.

Ronan doesn’t say _I’m sorry_ , because he never does, and because Declan doesn’t quite deserve it, anyway. Instead, they watch the floating lights for a little while, the way they dance in the air. Declan finds himself breathless with the magic and the memories of it all, just as he is every time he returns to this place.

When he finally moves to leave, Ronan puts a hand on his arm to stop him. Not demanding. Asking. Declan waits.

And then Ronan says, quietly, “You’ll tell me when it’s over?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

There’s not much left that can be said after that, and so he finally finds the strength to pull himself away from this place, back onto the highway. Rush hour is still going strong, brake lights shining red in the night. He listens to the Celtic hymns his mother used to hum in the kitchen, and when the CD finishes, he starts it again. And again.

The envelopes in his passenger seat tug at his consciousness. He ignores them.

He’s three hours deep in the drive when he thinks about calling Helen to tell her the news. It’s not quite an ungodly hour of the night, and he probably wouldn’t be waking her up anyway, and so he dials her.

She picks up just before it goes to voicemail. Helen says, “What?”

“I don’t appreciate you meddling in my family’s business,” Declan says.

She makes a noise that doesn’t sound even faintly regretful and asks, “But?”

“But I got what we need.”

There’s a silence between them, and then Helen says, “I’m waiting for my thank you, Declan.”

He laughs. It sounds tired, even to his own ears. “Let me know when you get it,” he says, and then he hangs up.

The traffic clears, eventually, and soon enough it’s just him and the open road. He feels a little lighter, now; something in his chest that was threatening to break has softened once more. The lights of Alexandria glow, up ahead, and he realizes that what he wants, what he needs, is close enough that he might reach out and grab it, if only he’ll dare to take the next step forward.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling, but he doesn’t mind it. Not in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to Llamas With Hats for the orphan hands idea. In other news, hopefully this has satisfied your need for brother angst, at least a little bit. There will be much more Helen in the next chapter. Thanks for reading :)


	12. Match Point

The office looks devastatingly gray on Monday morning, after the red dust of Henrietta and the lush greens of the Barns and the burnished gold of St. Agnes. Declan ignores his coworkers, for the most part, and makes his phone calls. The people on the other end are disgruntled and disagreeable, as per usual.

When at all possible, Declan slips a thick manila envelope into his waistband and heads for the bathroom, spending as long as he dares sifting through the forged files, checking to ensure that Ronan didn’t make any crucial mistakes.

His frequent trips earn him a few stares, here and there, but they don’t concern him. Not, at least, until Helen walks over and whispers in his ear, voice low, “Either you’ve got some severe intestinal issues, or you’re hiding something.”

Declan turns to glare at her. Her face is disconcertingly close. He whispers back, “I have to check the documents somehow. I’m not trying to drag this awful thing out. And what happened to not speaking to each other at work?”

She puts a hand on the back of his chair. Their noses are nearly brushing. It’s going to take a long time for him to get sufficient revenge for this very public cornering, and they both know it. She says, “What happened to not caring?”

When she goes, she takes half of the remaining papers with her. His coworkers are now shooting him furtive glances. Declan shoots each of them the middle finger.

His perusal of the documents goes long into the night, even with Helen’s help during the day. When he’s finally read through every incriminating piece of evidence, checked the details of every photograph, googled every listed URL, he lets his head drop to his kitchen table and allows himself a brief moment to close his eyes.

Only a little while longer, he reminds himself. And then this will all be over.

He isn’t able to catch Helen in a free moment until the next evening, when she’s leaving the office. Declan gets up from where he’s been waiting and follows. In the elevator, he says, “I finished with the documents. They’re good.”

She fastens on one diamond earring, and then the other. Then she looks him up and down and says, “Perfect. I assume you don’t have plans for tonight?”

Only now does he realize that she’s changed from her usual work attire of a smart, pastel suit, into a darker cocktail dress. Her hair is down, for once, and it softens her. He says, “That’s a rude thing to assume.”

“And yet,” she says, “I’m right. Aren’t I?”

He grumbles his way through a very half-hearted yes. “Why?”

“There’s a function I’m going to. Simmons will be there.”

"Oh.” The realization that this all could go very right or very, very wrong in a matter of hours is a daunting one.

Helen pats him on the arm. “I’ll text you the address. Bring the evidence, will you? But be discreet.”

She’s walking away, off towards her car, before he can think to remind her that he isn’t a child fumbling about in the dark, playing with toy guns. By the time he finds the right words, she’s already out of hearing distance, and so he settles for scowling the whole way back to his apartment, and then all the way to the hotel this abominable function is being held at.

When he drops his car off at the valet, a charming, ebullient smile is plastered to his face, all his scowling finished. He straightens his tie and hoists the strap of his messenger bag a little higher on his shoulder, all too aware of what sorts of sordid things lie within.

Just inside the hotel doors, Helen is waiting for him, a champagne glass in each hand. She hands him one. “How,” she says, “would you like to do this?”

He looks at her curiously. It may be the first time in all these weeks, he thinks, that she’s asked his opinion. Declan says, “I’ll do it alone. No need for you to put yourself in his line of fire any more than you already have.”

Helen snorts indelicately and sips at her champagne. He is reminded of that party, weeks ago, on a night much like this one, when they first discussed this matter. Something’s changed between them, he thinks.

He just can’t quite tell what.

While Helen engages in polite conversation with a senator, Declan stands at her side, ever attentive, but his mind is elsewhere. His eyes scan the crowd continuously, always watching for Simmons.

The man, however, refuses to show.

When the present conversation ends, they move onto the next, and then the one after that. They all sound the same, if you step back and squint. Pleasantries, politics, power plays. Declan only comes back to himself fully when Helen takes him by the arm and pulls him away from the platitudes, brows creased. She looks decidedly unhappy as she sets their champagne glasses on a passing waiter’s tray.

“What?” asks Declan, feeling as though he’s missing a crucial piece of information.

Helen tilts her head slightly to her right. He follows with his eyes, and soon sees a disgruntled George Hawthorne pushing his way through the crowd, heading towards them, eyes full of intent. He says, simply, “Oh.”

“Yes,” Helen says, “ _oh._ ” In the next heartbeat, she’s stepped closer to him, until they’re toe to toe, eye to eye. He feels as though he doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare breathe.

Quietly, so quietly he thinks he may have imagined it, she says, “I owe you one.”

And then she’s pressing her lips to his, soft and slow and achingly sweet. One of her hands curls into his hair, and he feels his heart thunder in his chest in response. All he knows, suddenly, is her warmth, her skin, her lips. He feels as though he may die from mere exposure.

When she finally pulls away, something inside of him shifts, and he realizes, suddenly: _Oh_.

Oh.

But this is no time for realizations; Helen is staring, eagle-eyed, at her ex-fiance. George is watching them back, his eyes now wary. He says, “So you weren’t joking, Helen.”

His tone makes Declan feel like an unappealing fabric swatch: displeasing but, in the end, trivial. The sensation eats at him.

“George,” Helen says, condescending, calm, controlled, “when do I ever joke?” Her hand is firmly tucked in the crook of Declan’s elbow; he can feel her nails through his suit jacket where they bite into his flesh.

“I had hoped this might be the exception,” the man says, “but I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

Helen offers him a thin smile, but says nothing in return. If there’s anything the Ganseys excel at, it is Not Causing A Scene.

It takes another moment, but when it becomes clear to George that he truly has lost, he turns on his heel and leaves. Helen, meanwhile, lets go of Declan’s arm and takes a step back, away from him. She looks completely unruffled by the whole exchange.

Declan wishes he could say the same for himself.

Instead, he pats his messenger bag distractedly and says, unable to meet Helen’s eyes, “I should go find Simmons.”

Without waiting for a response, he turns away as well, and disappears into the crowd.

* * *

 

He finds Simmons in the courtyard of the hotel, swathed in evening light and a midnight blue suit. The man turns to face him, and it seems as though he’s been waiting. “Oh,” he says, “what’s this? Come to struggle, or perhaps surrender?”

“Neither,” Declan says coolly, careful to leave a few feet between them. “I’ve come to give you an ultimatum.”

Simmons smirks. “Charming. Let’s have it then.”

“You’re going to stop looking for Ronan, and you’re going to break your spell,” Declan says, wasting no time, “or I’ll release evidence to the press that you’ve been involved in child trafficking and cannibalism.”

Simmons laughs, and laughs, and laughs. When he’s finished laughing, he says, “You’re a fool to think anyone might believe that.”

Declan pulls one manila envelope from his bag. “In here,” he says, “I have hundreds of pages of documents, ranging from sworn testimony to photographic evidence.” He pulls out the other. “In this one, I have physical proof.”

He puts the envelopes back and waits for Simmons’ reaction.

The man takes his time, putting his hands in his pants pockets and sighing deeply. “You think I don’t know how you got those?” he asks, finally.

Declan says, “I think we both know it doesn’t matter. You can’t risk exposing the business.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because if you do,” he says, voice measured, “I won’t hesitate to dump your body in the Potomac and leave it to the police to find you. I’m giving you an out here: leave. Change your name. Stop looking. Your move.”

The corners of Simmons’ mouth tilt up, malicious. “It is indeed, Lynch. It is indeed.”

Without another word, he turns on his heel and leaves.

Declan watches him go, and then he steps back into the party, nodding at and shaking hands with politician after lobbyist after bureaucrat, until at last he finds himself at Helen’s side once more. She looks at him. He decides it’s safest to look at her shoulder.

He says, voice low, “All we can do now is wait.”

She nods, just the slightest tilt of her head. “Are you leaving?”

“That was the plan.”

“Alright,” she says. “Drop the evidence in my trunk before you go.” She presses a key into his hand. “Spare,” she adds, by way of explanation. “Make sure you lock it behind you.”

Declan barely resists the urge to roll his eyes as he goes. The parking lot is quiet, sheltered from the busy street; the only illumination comes from the intermittent streetlights. Helen’s car is parked three rows away from his; the lock on the trunk jams three times before he can pull it open and put the messenger bag inside.

When it’s finished, he walks to his own car and gets in, breathing deeply. The relief washes over him in a wave, because though it’s not quite finished, how could it not be? How could Simmons choose anything else?

The drive home is quiet. Declan thinks that perhaps tonight he will be able to sleep well for the first time in weeks. And then tomorrow morning, he’ll call Ronan, and he’ll tell him it’s finished.

In his apartment, he drops his suit jacket and tie on the floor and collapses onto his bed, too tired to even kick off his shoes. Behind his eyelids, as he waits for sleep to claim him, he replays the kiss, and then the conversation with Simmons, and then again the kiss, and the kiss, and the kiss.

He doesn’t know what to make of it, any of it.

Before he can come to any definitive conclusions, sleep has grabbed him and pulled him down into restless dreams.

* * *

 

When he wakes, it doesn’t feel like morning. Something woke him, he knows, but he can’t tell what. And then — There, on the floor. His suit jacket is ringing.

His phone.

Declan stumbles from bed, all coordination lost, and pulls his phone from his breast pocket. The screen blinds him; he closes his eyes against the glare as he answers. “Hello?”

There are muffled, guttural sounds on the other end, and then a slight hiccup. “Declan,” says someone’s voice. “Declan.”

“ _Helen?_ ” He’s wide awake now, on his feet. His clock tells him it’s not quite three in the morning.

On the other end, Helen makes a choked noise before saying, “Can you — come here?”

He’s already out of his room, grabbing his car keys from the counter, before it occurs to him to ask, “Where exactly is _here_?”

“My apartment,” she says. Her breathing is staticky and off-kilter.

He asks, as he jams his keys into the ignition of the Volvo, “Are you hurt?”

There’s a beat of silence, during which he worries she might have dropped the phone, but all she says is, “Just get here, okay? Please.”

And then the line goes dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go!! Thank you so much to those of you who continue to comment and leave kudos. Hope you liked the chapter! :)


	13. Break

Helen lives in the nicer part of D.C., in a cute townhouse in Georgetown. The front door is already open a crack when he arrives; he pauses to go back to his car and grab his gun before crossing the threshold. Something about it all sends chills up his spine.

Inside, Declan finds chairs tipped over and drawers emptied, paintings torn from their frames and gouges drawn deep in the floorboard. In the kitchen, Helen is sitting, slumped, in a wooden chair, her hands tied to the back, her ankles tied to the legs.

A thin line of blood drips, slowly, from her lips.

Declan starts towards her, worry lodging itself deep in his chest, but he’s only made it two steps when the sharp ice of a metal blade is pressed against his throat. He swallows thickly.

From behind him, Simmons says, “Nice of you to join us, Mr. Lynch.”

Declan bites back a scathing _fuck you_ , and settles for clenching his jaw firmly.

Simmons continues. “Ms. Gansey here was reticent to call you at first, but I think we were able to come to an appropriate agreement, with some prodding.” Both men look at her: the bruises on her arms, the blood on her face. “Now,” Simmons says, “you’re going to tell me where the evidence is. After that, you’re going to tell me where your brother is. Ronan, was it? I _want him_. And if you’re lucky, I may leave one of you alive at the end.”

Helen spits blood onto the white tiled floor. Declan feels his gun, tucked into his waistband beneath his shirt, burning against his skin, branding him.

When Simmons prods him forwards, he obliges. They walk through the house, leaving Helen behind them. Declan’s mind races; _if I were Helen_ , he asks himself, _where would I hide bloody, gruesome evidence?_ He knows — he _knows_ — that she would never be foolish enough to leave it out, even for a moment.

They stop in a bedroom. Helen’s, if the photos on the bureau and the soft pink silk curtains are any indication. Simmons says, “I’ll break one of her fingers every five minutes until you give me what I want. When I’m out of fingers, I’ll move on to real bones.” He shoves Declan forward.

Declan doesn’t know where to start. Finding the envelopes is just as risky as not finding them; in the end, he settles for idly rifling through a box of Helen’s old papers, essays and art projects and unfinished math problems.

Simmons says, “Stop playing, boy.” His words are a snarl.

“Who says I’m playing?” Declan asks, calmly. He looks up at Simmons. “I think you and I are more alike than you think.”

The words taste like acid and regret and that omnipresent _fear_ — fear that they may be true. That Declan Lynch may be a monster, after all. But Simmons merely smiles, wolfishly, and turns away. When five minutes are up, he turns and starts down the hallway, towards the kitchen.

Quiet as he can, Declan follows, drawing his gun from his waistband. The click of the safety echoes loud in his mind, in the still air, and he prays it’s all in his imagination.

And then Simmons is whirling on him, face twisted cruelly. “Thought you could fool me —”

He stops, chokes out a breath, and screams.

When Simmons falls to the floor, Declan sees Helen, crouched behind him, a kitchen knife in each hand. She’s attempted to wipe the blood from her mouth, leaving a gory trail in its wake. “Achilles tendon,” she says. “Hurts like a son of a bitch when it snaps, isn’t that right, Petey?” She taps the flat edge of a blade against his left calf as he clutches at his leg and moans in agony.

It takes Declan a moment to recover from the shock of it all. When he does, he’s quick to pin Simmons’ wrists to the floor with his feet. He says, “I tried to play nice, Simmons. Didn’t I?”

The man makes no coherent sound; with a sigh, Declan realizes that there’s nothing more to be said. Short of visibly or permanently harming him, they’ve done what they can. And so Declan steps away from him, careful to keep his gun trained on Simmons as he goes.

“Get up,” he says. Neither he nor Helen offer the man any sort of help as he struggles to his feet, a light sweat breaking out across his brow.

When he’s fully upright, Declan motions towards the front door. “You know your way out.” And the man goes, slowly, slowly, the gun at his back serving as a powerful motivator. When he’s left, a trail of blood in his wake, there’s a moment of empty silence in the townhouse, a moment of disbelief.

And then Declan turns to Helen and says, “Are you hurt?” She’s slumped against the wall, clutching at her side, knives on the floor. He takes a step towards her, reaches out a hand — to do what, he doesn’t know — and then thinks better of it. “What did he do to you?” he asks, quietly.

Her eyes are closed, her head tilted back towards the ceiling. “He just kicked me around a little bit,” she says. “That’s all. I’m alright.”

He can see the bruises already forming around her wrists from where she was tied to the chair, the thin lacerations that came from breaking free. A wide purple mark graces her temple, vibrant against her skin. He says, “You’re sure?”

Helen moves away from him, now. In the living room, she picks a lamp up off the floor and sets it on its stand. She sweeps up shards of glass from broken picture frames with her hands, setting the pictures on the sofa: one of herself and her brother in front of a lofty castle, a family portrait outside the Gansey estate.

Declan helps where he can, righting tables, scrubbing blood from the tiles. It’s nearly four in the morning before Helen sets down the pieces of a broken vase and says, “Not like any of this won’t be here tomorrow.”

She starts towards the back of the house, and after a moment’s deliberation, Declan follows. He pauses at the threshold to her room, watching as she buries herself beneath her comforter, unwilling to intrude on such a moment. It’s a curious, discomfiting thing, seeing Helen so vulnerable, and he finds himself wondering why he, of all people, has suddenly been made privy to this side of her.

“You’ll be alright?” he asks, coming back to himself.

He can only see her eyes, luminous in the semi-darkness. Voice muffled, she says, simply, “Stay.”

“I really need to —”

“Declan,” she says, and he hears, now, the tremor she’s been working to suppress for the past hour. He looks at the way her fingers grip the edge of her comforter, as if it’s a lifeline. “Please.”

He walks back to check the deadbolt on her front door one last time, and then he toes off his shoes and lies down on the empty side of the bed, on top of the covers, facing away from Helen. For one soft, simple moment, he listens to the way their breaths mingle in the darkness.

Then he says, voice hardly more than a whisper, “You didn’t give it up. The evidence, I mean. You —”

“You would have done the same for me,” she says, and he wonders when, exactly, they came to trust each other so expressly, so completely. He wonders how he missed such a change.

When he turns to look at her, he finds that she’s shut her eyes. Her eyelashes fan out across her cheeks, her skin illuminated intermittently by the glow of the streetlights through her curtains. Something in his chest thumps painfully at the sight of her.

In the quiet, Declan realizes that he doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the morning, whether Simmons will vanish or dare to make another nuisance of himself. But there also isn’t much he can do about it, no matter the outcome. At the very least, they still have the evidence. They still have a fighting chance.

If he’s honest, he hadn’t thought Helen had it in her to fight for herself like she did. To fight for _him_.

He doesn’t know what made her decide that he was worthy of her help. All he knows is that he’s almost unbearably grateful for it.

* * *

 

Declan wakes to the sound of an alarm blaring. Helen, he quickly realizes, is not here, but her side of the bed is still warm. He stands, runs a hand through his hair, and makes his way to the kitchen, where the smell of coffee is strongest.

Early morning light filters in through the windows, settling on Helen where she sits at the counter, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. “You’re awake,” she notes.

“How are the bruises?” he asks, shifting uncomfortably. He’s never been the type to wake up next to someone in the morning, much less someone he hasn’t slept with.

Helen says, “I’ll live.” She tilts her head towards the manila envelopes, which now rest on the counter. “Need to get these in to my mother soon.”

“How come?”

“The last thing we need,” she says, “is the media making a circus out of this. It will go better for everyone if we have it taken care of from the inside. From me to her, her to the FBI, the FBI to Simmons. Simple.”

Declan leans against the counter and looks at her as she returns to her newspaper. She’s wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, and he finds it as charming as it is ridiculous. He’s about to say something about it, or perhaps ask her if she has any Cheerios he might indulge in, when she turns to face him, eyes bright with intensity.

“I owe you an apology,” she says, suddenly. Her hands are wrapped tightly around her mug of coffee; what he might once have mistaken for insincerity, he now recognizes as discomfort.

“For what?” he asks.

“For the party,” says Helen. “I shouldn’t have — I should have asked. Before I kissed you.” Her cheeks tinge pink, just barely, at the words.

Declan says, “It’s fine.”

She looks away, and he can tell she doesn’t believe him. Who would have thought Helen Gansey could feel such a human thing as _guilt?_

Softly, he says, “Helen. Look at me.” She does. “I could have said no,” he tells her. “I could have stepped away. But I didn’t.”

He waits patiently for her to absorb this, and then he arches an eyebrow. _Your move,_ it says.

Declan can’t remember the last time his heart beat this fast.

After another moment’s hesitation, Helen reaches for him. The morning sunlight washes everything about them in gold, and when their lips meet, it feels like an inevitable conclusion. An inevitable _beginning_.

They break apart, breathless, and then Declan finds himself laughing, of all things, his hands still tangled in her hair. “I thought you would kick me out,” he says. “I thought you would call me a fool.”

She’s smiling, too, her cheeks flushed. “I let you drive my _car,_ asshole. I don’t let anybody drive my car.”

“Oh,” Declan says.

“Yes,” she says, mockingly, kindly, softly, “oh.” And it feels as though they’ve had this conversation before, only this time, it doesn’t hurt. This time, it feels as though he is made of light; this, he thinks, is probably the closest he will ever get to knowing magic in his lifetime.

He closes his eyes, and he basks in it.

* * *

 

On Wednesday afternoon, Peter Simmons is quietly and efficiently escorted from the offices of Senator Gansey by two suit-clad FBI agents. A few interns look up, briefly, but they soon return to their work, the going-ons of the higher-ups having never held much interest. If the shape of a certain intern’s mouth looks a little more smug than usual, no one says anything about it.

On Wednesday evening, Helen Gansey rings Declan Lynch’s doorbell, two boxes of Chinese takeout hot in her hands. When he opens his front door, she says, “I’ve been told this is how normal people date.”

“Fuck normal,” he says by way of response. “Next time, feel free to break in.”

Many hours later, he remembers that he still has a final piece of unfinished business. He pulls out his phone and dials a familiar number, unsure as always if his call might be answered.

It is. “Declan?”

“Ronan,” he says. “It’s finished. It’s okay.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Ronan says, “Good. We thought, with the ley line righting itself, that it might have — ended. I’m — Thank you.”

The line goes dead before Declan can say anything more, and he knows that they still have a long way to go, years of damage and scars to undo and to heal, but it feels like a victory all the same. It feels like absolution.

It feels like he might not always be alone, after all.

* * *

 

On Sunday morning, Ronan takes one look at Helen and Declan’s entwined hands as they walk into St. Agnes, and then he starts to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies for leaving you all to dwell on that cliffhanger for so long. I had to rewrite the chapter, and school started, and it's just been a little hectic.   
>  In any case, I hope you enjoyed this final chapter. Thank you so, so much to those of you who commented on every chapter, the whole way through (you know who you are <3), and to everyone who's read the story. If you'd like to come scream with me about anything, at anytime, you can find me as [softlykaz](http://www.softlykaz.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Much love <3


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